Product Owner III

By joining the National Student Clearinghouse, you can be sure that the work you do now will help shape the future of education and the workforce in the U.S. As the trusted source for higher education data since 1993, the Clearinghouse is the leading provider of transcript and data exchange services, automated enrollment and degree verifications, learner insights and research, and compliance solutions for schools, businesses, and learners nationwide. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Clearinghouse works with nearly 3,600 postsecondary institutions to meet their compliance needs and with thousands of high schools and districts to provide continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics about their alumni. In addition, the Research Center publications inform policymakers and business leaders about student educational pathways. Using our unique combination of data, analytics, and software to drive our mission, security and privacy is paramount. Join us as we continue to invest in our talent and new advanced technologies to unlock the power of data on behalf of all learners.

About the Role:

The Specialist III, Product Owner plays a pivotal role in translating customer and business objectives into actionable technology requirements. In this position, you will research, communicate, negotiate, and document both business and technical requirements. You'll work independently and collaborate with subject matter experts to gather and analyze data, document findings, define requirements, and provide support throughout the product lifecycle-including development, testing, training, implementation, and ongoing system maintenance.

As a standing leader within agile scrum and Kanban teams, you will manage and support multiple initiatives simultaneously. You'll employ creative, innovative approaches to data collection, analysis, research, design, documentation, and go-to-market strategies to inform product decisions. Your experience spans diverse product roles, including SaaS and web-based solutions, enabling you to coach junior team members and provide cross-functional support as needed.

The ideal candidate understands the critical importance of documenting interconnections, integrations, and dependencies across products, technologies, processes, and systems. You proactively seek ways to enhance system flexibility while minimizing reliance on technical resources and future maintenance. Highly organized and process-driven, you continuously work to improve existing systems. Technically adept, you can perform analysis, gather intelligence, and build simple queries to check logs, aggregate data, and deliver actionable insights.

Currently, this is a remote-first position, and this position may be required to periodically work on-site at our office and the frequency would depend on the department/division's requirements. Therefore, candidates must either reside within a reasonable distance to commute to our office or be willing to travel to our office in Herndon, when required.

How You Contribute:

• Demonstrate the Clearinghouse's core competencies: Customer Focus, Optimizes Work Processes, Collaborates, Communicates Effectively, and Be Open and Authentic.
• Within Customer Focus, this competency includes data literacy skills to build customer-centric solutions. This role must understand the business purpose of data, including how it is being used for a particular service and across the enterprise, how data is modeled, defined, validated, captured, cleansed, stored, reported, visualized and accessed. This role will leverage that data knowledge to write business requirements, process flows, and user stories that accurately reflect enterprise data and provide additional data insights for education and business stakeholders.
• Work closely with the Business Owner/Product Manager to understand the needs of the market/industry and define the scope for initiatives.
• Lead efforts to solicit, review, document, and refine requirements via interviews, workshops, group meetings, and/or existing systems documentation or procedures.
• Prioritize the backlog, including refinement and preparation (all stories business, enablers, and technical).
• Maintain a backlog to have a minimum of 2-3 sprints worth of groomed work.
• Contribute to the successful on-time, within-budget and in-scope delivery of business initiatives.
• Define and develop user stories, wireframes, sequence diagrams, and data flow diagrams.
• Produce "As Is" and "To Be" process flow diagrams.
• Derive business requirements from use cases in an Agile environment.
• Create, revise, validate, and maintain business flow maps, business requirements, business rules, user stories, user flows, etc.
• Analyze the impact of new business requirements/user stories on the current application from both a business and technical perspective.
• Collaborate with the Scrum Master and Scrum Team to determine estimated delivery dates, dependencies, team velocity, challenges, quality assurance, user acceptance and overall performance of teams.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and other business owners to identify all cross-system interfaces and build out the requirements.
• Accurately represent the needs of the business owner(s) to scrum teams and vice versa.
• Participate in various Agile ceremonies.
• Understand and effectively communicate to scrum teams and business owners all the data elements utilized by the service and understand their service details and processes
• Create and foster positive and open communication channels between external and internal stakeholders.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, teamwork, innovation, and service excellence at the Clearinghouse and help resolve any product or project issues.

Position may be required to perform other duties as required. These essential functions are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the job. Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform these essential functions.

What You Bring to the Table:

• Bachelors degree in technology, business, or related field. A combination of education and experience, including through military service, will also be considered.
• 5 years of related experience in soliciting and defining requirements for mission critical business applications.
• Experience with:
  
  
  • Agile Methodology as a Product Owner or Business Analyst.
  • Embedding quality controls in work processes to assure uninterrupted operation.
  • Analyzing data for composing targeted and concise requirements and translating strategic and tactical goals.
  
  
  
• Demonstrated ability to:
  • Exemplify strong collaboration.
  • Solicit, define, and write business requirements from research, customer, market, and internal feedback to translate into user stories.
  • Have product knowledge and its impact to other product(s).
  • Identify tradeoffs in decisions and drive resolution of challenges across the organization.
  • Model solutions for a business process.
  
  
  
• Demonstrated proficiency:
  • Working with Agile principles, processes, driving decision making, and aligning the team/organization on goals and objectives.
  • Communicating and negotiating effectively and confidently with internal stakeholders from all levels of the organization, and external stakeholders to represent the product, department, and company.
  • Managing and prioritizing multiple initiatives to ensure successful, timely completion and issue-resolution.
  
  
  
• Working with Microsoft Office Suite, and/or other collaboration tools.
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication, and effective presentation skills.
• Demonstrates the Clearinghouse's core competencies: customer focus, optimizes work processes, communicates effectively, collaborates, and is open and authentic.
• Must live within a commutable distance to Herndon, VA (preferred) or in one of the Clearinghouse's approved States for hiring purposes. Refer to our HR Policies Page, located on our Careers site at for more details.
• Must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. We do not intend to sponsor external applicants for work visas, and may consider sponsorship only if no qualified candidates can be found who are authorized to work without sponsorship.
• Must be at least 18 years old.

Additional Desired Qualifications

• Knowledge of Clearinghouse services and applications.
• Knowledge of education related data standards, such as IMS Comprehensive Learner Record or Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) or other industry-based or government-based data exchange standards.
• Experience with:
  • Software development management tools (Rally, JIRA, Confluence).
  • CRM and enterprise tools.
  • Performing complex data analysis using analytic tools and database queries.
  
  
  
• Master's degree or PhD in technology, business, or related field or additional combination of advanced education and experience, including through military service.
• Project Management skills to successfully manage a project from ideation through delivery with timelines and all required wireframes and documentation.
• Critical thinking skills to successfully distill complex processes and data.
• Strategic, interpersonal, and operational competencies required to lead and champion a project with a clear vision.
• Task tracking and management, through an ability to project manage with minimal supervision, resulting in successfully managing day to day projects.
• Project Planning & Scoping - Can independently create and support development of project plans, timelines, milestones, and deliverables aligned to business objectives
• Task Tracking & Execution - Manages day-to-day project activities; tracks progress against plan and escalates risks or delays early.
• Self-Direction & Accountability - Operates with a high degree of ownership; proactively identifies issues and opportunities and identifies possible solutions without needing constant direction.
• Resilience & Follow-Through - Maintains focus in dynamic environments and ensures completion of tasks despite obstacles and ambiguity by proposing solutions not presenting problems.
• Prioritization & Task Management - Ability to independently assess competing priorities, sequence work effectively, and meet deadlines with minimal oversight.
• Acts with urgency - Begins work without delay (< 2 hours when possible), meets agreed deadlines and proactively keeps managers updated in writing of work completed and timelines that are at risk, communicates blockers and changes early.
• Documents and communicates - in writing - meeting summaries, decisions, all actions and schedules for work to be performed based on decision.
• Utilizes AI tools such as Co-pilot and Gemini.

Physical Demands:

• Use of a computer for 8 or more hours a day.
• Use of a telephone and/or copy machine.
• Frequently required to sit for 7 or more hours per day.
• Occasionally required to use hands and fingers to operate, handle, and reach.
• Vision abilities include close vision and the ability to adjust focus.
• Travel via car, train, and airplane, when needed.

Benefits and Related Information

The National Student Clearinghouse provides a robust benefit program designed to help meet the needs of each employee and their family, both now and in the future. We offer comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance, as well as life and disability insurance benefits, for employees and their qualified dependents. Health care, dependent care, and limited purpose flexible spending accounts, as well as a health savings account with annual employer contributions of $300 for employees and $600 for employees who are enrolled with their spouse and/or dependents, voluntary supplemental health plans for Accident and Hospital Indemnity coverage, and infertility coverage are options available for employees to set aside pre-taxed dollars for certain qualifying expenses. We offer a very generous 401k matching contribution program with the opportunity to defer pre-tax and Roth contributions, as well as catch-up contributions for those who are eligible! We are proud to offer a competitive paid leave program consisting of vacation, sick, and personal time, as well as paid holidays, up to 3 weeks of paid parental leave during a 12-month period , and up to 5 days of paid military leave per calendar year . Vacation time will accrue based on length of service, and new full-time hires can accrue up to 13 days of vacation and up to 10 days of sick time per year. On an annual basis, new employees may use up to 32 hours of accrued sick time as personal time. Additionally, the Clearinghouse observes at least 15 paid holidays per year, including company year-end close between Christmas and New Years Holidays.

Another perk is that employees have the option to get reimbursed for basic wholesale company and roadside assistance memberships (e.g., Costco and AAA) and to request a buy back on portions of unused accrued vacation based on tenure and certain other qualifications. Employees can further their education and professional development by using our Employee Education Assistance Program, which establishes reimbursement for qualified education expenses upon successful completion of the program, and leveraging the enterprise-wide LinkedIn Learning subscription. There are additional employee benefits too, including but not limited to, mental health with up to eight free therapy sessions for employees and their family members and well-being reward benefits. With the Clearinghouse being an eligible 501(3)(c) nonprofit organization, employees are eligible for service credit towards the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF). To find out more, please request a copy of our Benefits at a Glance!

Additionally, we reasonably believe that the salary range for this position is between $89,160 and $112,012.

The pay range listed above represents a good faith estimate and is not a guarantee of compensation or salary. The National Student Clearinghouse considers multiple factors when determining base pay for offers, including but not limited to the responsibilities and scope of the role, as well as a candidate's experience, education, knowledge, skills, abilities, internal equity, and alignment with market data.

Internal Candidates: If you feel you meet the qualifications for the role, we strongly encourage you to apply and focus on preparing for the application process. Finalist internal candidates will receive a compensation review prior to any offer being made. In accordance with the Clearinghouse's compensation and promotion guidelines, internal compensation practices will be applied first, which may result in pay that differs from the posted salary range.

This job announcement was posted to the National Student Clearinghouse's Careers site at on 8/14/2026 and the online application period will be open for at least 3 days from this posting date. A completed online application is required to be considered for this opportunity.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities: The National Student Clearinghouse is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to actual or perceived race, creed, color, religion, alienage or national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, disability or handicap, sex, marital status, veteran status (or known to have a spousal, family, business, social or other relationship or association with a protected veteran), sexual orientation, genetic information, arrest record, natural hairstyle, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws. Our management team is dedicated to this policy with respect to recruitment, hiring, placement, promotion, transfer, training, compensation, benefits, employee activities and general treatment during employment.

Pay Transparency Notice : The National Student Clearinghouse is a federal contractor that abides by all applicable equal opportunity laws and regulations. Under these laws, companies doing business with the federal government must provide applicants and employees with certain policies, including the following information. The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)