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Purdue University Global invites applications for the position of VP, Student Experience Product. 

The University:

Building on Purdue University's mission to provide greater access to affordable, high-quality education, Purdue University Global is a public, nonprofit institution offering a world-class online education aligned to the needs of working adults. We are looking for a product leader to help us build a future-forward, AI-enabled student experience focused on excellence and student success so each student can achieve their educational and career goals.

The VP, Student Experience Product will lead the strategy, design, and continuous improvement of the end-to-end student experience, including digital products for and in support of students, and enabling capabilities that support student success and advance the outcomes of Purdue Global students. This is a rare opportunity to build a product organization from the ground up: hiring and developing a small, senior product team; establishing how product works at Purdue Global; and setting the strategy for an experience that must serve two distinct academic models — a competency-based track and a traditional term-based track — each with different rhythms, needs, and definitions of student success.

Our Opportunity:

Reporting to the Chief Academic Officer (CAO), the VP, Student Experience Product collaborates closely with university leaders and teams to deliver the vision, strategy, and execution of digital product value streams across the student journey. This leader will build and lead a small but mighty team of senior product managers, each owning a distinct value stream of the student journey. This team will partner closely with engineering, data science, school leaders, enrollment, academic operations, and other cross-functional teams to deliver measurable improvements in student engagement, learning, retention, and completion. This is a highly visible, builder-oriented role for a product leader who wants to shape both the team and the product from an early stage.

This is a product leadership role, not a project or program management role. The VP and team own what gets built and why — problem definition, strategy, and prioritization — and are measured by the student outcomes that result: retention, completion, and engagement. The IT, engineering, and project management teams own how and when it gets delivered.

This role is primarily virtual and requires minimal travel (occasional visits to West Lafayette, Indiana, as needed).

What to expect in this role:

Product Vision & Strategy

• Serve as a leader within Purdue Global's broader transformation, helping the institution transition from functionally organized projects and siloed vendor-driven solutions toward durable, cross-functional ownership of student outcomes and experiences.
• Define and own the product vision and multi-year strategy for an integrated student experience, working with academic leaders, enrollment, technology, data, faculty, and operational teams to ensure it reflects institutional priorities, functional expertise, student needs, and delivery realities for multiple types of learning pathways. 
• Translate institutional priorities — retention, completion, and student success — into a clear, prioritized product strategy.
• Represent the student experience product function in leadership discussions, advocating for decisions grounded in student and business outcomes rather than default vendor capabilities.

Team Leadership & Talent Development

• Build, develop, and lead a small team of senior product managers, each owning a distinct value stream across the student journey, with responsibilities that include product management, experience and service design, and student/user voice/research.
• Set standards of excellence for product craft: establish product operating rhythms, prioritization frameworks, and standards for how the team scopes, ships, and measures its work.
• Coach and develop a team of outcome-driving product managers; create a team culture that is evidence-based, collaborative, moves quickly, and takes accountability for results.
• Determine when and how to supplement the core team with contractors for finite, high-leverage work.

Execution & Delivery

• Form a close partnership with IT leadership in which the student-experience product organization owns problem definition, student and business outcomes, product strategy, and prioritization — including build, buy, configure, integrate, and retire decisions — while IT owns technical strategy, architecture, engineering leadership, security, and delivery.
• Lead the redesign of end-to-end student journeys by rethinking processes and experiences to put students and their success at the center, leveraging technology (including AI) to reduce unproductive friction and advance university goals with sustainable operational scale.
• Drive product discovery and validation, and own product decisions end-to-end — balancing speed, quality, and the operational realities of a nonprofit online university — so the team solves real, evidenced student problems rather than assumed ones.

What to expect in this role:

Data-Informed Decision Making

• Partner with the data science team to identify key opportunities to improve student outcomes through personalization; design and build both generative and deterministic models to deliver timely, individualized student support; and define, track, and report the leading and key metrics for multiple audiences (leaders, faculty, advisors, etc.).
• Bring together student research, behavioral and operational data, academic outcomes, support interventions, and institutional knowledge to guide discovery, prioritization, experimentation, and continuous improvement.
• Use qualitative and quantitative research — student feedback, usage data, support trends — to continuously refine strategy and priorities.
• Bring rigor to prioritization: every product decision should be traceable to a student or institutional outcome.

Cross-Functional Partnership & Stakeholder Engagement

• Build strong working relationships across academics, enrollment services, engineering, data science, faculty leadership, and other cross-functional teams.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to the CAO and broader leadership team on product strategy, team health, and delivery progress.
• Communicate strategy, progress, and tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including executive leadership.

Experience:

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree preferred, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience will be considered.

• 10 years of related experience; 8+ years of product management experience, including 3+ years in a product leadership role building and managing a team of product managers.

  • Experience building or transforming a product, student-experience, service-design, or digital-experience function within a complex organization.

  • Demonstrated experience leading research-informed discovery and translating student or customer insights into strategy, roadmaps, service improvements, and measurable outcomes.

  • Experience redesigning products that span technology, operations, and organizational boundaries.

  • Demonstrated track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong product talent.

  • Experience owning a product strategy end-to-end, from definition through delivery through measurable outcomes.

  • Experience in EdTech, higher education, or another complex, multi-stakeholder consumer or B2C environment strongly preferred.

  • Experience with competency-based or non-traditional academic models is preferred, but not required.

What we’re looking for:

• Proven ability to build a product function and team from an early stage, including establishing process, standards, and culture where little formal structure currently exists.

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex organizational change, influence without relying on formal authority, and introduce product ways of working in an established, multi-stakeholder organization.

• Strong product instincts paired with rigor: comfortable balancing qualitative judgment with quantitative evidence.

• Skilled at translating ambiguous, high-level institutional goals into a clear, sequenced, executable strategy.

• Experience partnering closely with engineering and data science leadership to deliver complex, technical products.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to adapt style and depth for audiences ranging from individual contributors to executive leadership and the board.

• Strong organizational and prioritization skills; comfortable managing competing priorities across multiple value streams and stakeholders.

• Ability to operate with significant autonomy and sound independent judgment, while knowing when to loop in the CAO or other senior leaders.

• A genuine interest in serving working adult learners and improving educational access and outcomes.

• Experience working successfully in a distributed or remote team environment.

Work Environment:

Qualified persons are asked to submit the following through an application on the Purdue Global career site: a cover letter of application; a complete curriculum vitae, including names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses of three references.  

The priority application deadline is August 27, 2026.  After the priority deadline, the job posting will be closed. 

Questions about this search may be directed to recruiting@purdueglobal.edu.  

Additional Information:

• Target salary is up to $180,000.

• Purdue University Global will not sponsor employment authorization for this position.   

• A background check will be required for employment in this position. 

• We ask that our remote employees have access to a reliable internet connection and a dedicated, properly equipped workspace that is free of distractions. You may wish to review the Purdue Virtual Meeting Professional Standards. 

• FLSA: Exempt (Not Eligible For Overtime) This position is generally classified as exempt unless a non-exempt classification is required by applicable state law.

• Purdue Global is an EO/EA employer. Our goal is to recruit and retain talent from a broad pool of applicants. Purdue Global celebrates a variety of perspectives, experiences, and skills to support a success-focused environment for employees and students. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. All are encouraged to apply.

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