Chief Product Officer

Position Title: Chief Product Officer
Reports to: Executive Director

Direct Reports: Founding Engineer + 2 planned additional Engineers 

Role Type: Full-Time Employee

About Us:
The Student Basic Needs Coalition (SBNC) is a national nonprofit connecting students with public benefits and basic needs resources.

Millions of students are eligible for programs like SNAP and Medicaid, yet the majority never enroll due to complex rules, stigma, and administrative barriers. SBNC addresses this gap by partnering with organizations across the country to implement peer-led outreach programs and deploy Navvy , SBNC's AI-enabled technology platform that screens students for benefits eligibility and supports the enrollment process.

Since launching in 2020, SBNC has grown rapidly. The organization now partners with 100+ campuses nationwide , has screened more than 50,000 students , and has referred students to over $116 million in potential public benefits . In 2024, SBNC hired its first full-time Executive Director and has since grown to a $1.2 million organization with a team of five , expanding to eight staff members this year as it scales its national model.

Position Overview:
SBNC is hiring its first Chief Product Officer to lead the next stage of our product function: turning an initial, high-traction product into a platform that measurably improves outcomes. We're looking for a product leader to help us transform how students access basic-needs resources and build technology capable of scaling to hundreds of campuses nationwide.

The Chief Product Officer will own product strategy, discovery, and execution for a platform that gets students from screening to application to benefit receipt. Along the way, the ideal candidate will be able to be an active market participant, ensuring that our roadmap aligns closely with the goals of the campuses we hope to serve. We are looking for someone who values evidence, whether that comes from interviewing students, embedding with campus leaders, performing A/B tests at scale, or analyzing evaluation data. 

This role involves being a responsible AI practitioner, helping direct the organization towards how AI can meaningly improve student support, from personalization, operational efficiency, and campus-partner value. The Chief Product Officer will need to be well-versed in AI evals, and able to leverage them to drive iterative improvements in our products

This is a hands-on executive role for someone equally comfortable setting multi-year product strategy with the executive team and board, conducting or synthesizing user research, making build-versus-buy decisions, reviewing product data, and stewarding engineers towards scoping and shipping impactful features.

Responsibilities:

Product Strategy & Leadership (25%)

• Set product direction: Own SBNC's product vision and strategy, translating organizational goals, student needs, and campus-partner needs into a coherent and prioritized roadmap.
• Align product and organizational strategy: Partner closely with the ED and executive team to align product investment with SBNC's broader strategy, impact goals, communications, and fundraising priorities.
• Build a repeatable learning process: Establish a consistent approach for identifying barriers to student action, prioritizing hypotheses, and determining which interventions SBNC should test next.
• Build the product function: Hire, mentor, and grow a lean technology team while remaining close to the work as the organization scales.
• Guide responsible AI use: Define where AI belongs in SBNC's product and evaluate AI-enabled features for efficacy, accuracy, reliability, bias, and safety

Product Discovery, Research & Experimentation (40%)

• Own product discovery: Design and run qualitative and quantitative research with students, campus partners, and staff to understand needs, behaviors, and opportunities and inform product decisions.
• Diagnose barriers: Identify why students drop off or struggle to complete key actions, develop hypotheses about the causes, and prioritize the barriers most worth addressing.
• Identify partner value: Determine which problems, features, and capabilities campus partners value and may be willing to pay for, using partner feedback, usage data, and pilot results.
• Run rapid experiments: Design lightweight tests of product hypotheses to learn quickly before committing significant engineering resources.
• Interpret evidence rigorously: Assess research, product, and experiment results appropriately, distinguishing directional signals from stronger evidence and avoiding overclaiming from limited data.
• Measure product performance: Partner with data and evaluation staff to define success metrics and assess whether the product and specific changes improve student behavior and outcomes.

Delivery & Execution (35%)

• Lead from 0 to 1 and 1 to n: Identify and validate the right problems to solve, define the next core products and AI-enabled capabilities, and bring them to market.
• Stay hands-on: Personally write specs, review designs, unblock engineering, and make day-to-day product judgment calls in a lean team.
• Own roadmap execution: Prioritize and sequence work while balancing speed, quality, learning, and the realities of limited engineering capacity.

Skills and Competencies

We recognize that some individuals from underrepresented backgrounds may hesitate to apply if they don't meet 100% of the listed qualifications. Please don't let that discourage you from applying! We value the unique skills, experiences, and perspectives that each applicant brings, and we encourage you to apply if you believe your background demonstrates the required skills and competencies.

Required for all Roles at SBNC:

• Commitment to SBNC's mission to help postsecondary students connect to the resources they need to stay enrolled, complete their education, and build a foundation for economic mobility
• Treats students as co-designers, not only people we serve, and prioritizes those facing the greatest barriers first, true to our value of Lead With Students
• Resourceful and brings a sense of urgency to removing friction between students and the benefits they qualify for, while maintaining a high bar for quality and follow-through — our value of Unlock Every Dollar
• Designs for Scale - Thinks a step ahead of where the organization is today, prioritizes what matters most, and builds for the next campus, policy shift, or student barrier before it arrives
• Comfortable wearing multiple hats and Owns the Outcome , asks for help when stuck, and shows up for teammates when it counts. Brings a startup mentality.
• Treats growth and innovation as an ongoing habit and leans on the team to Learn Together by seeking feedback, sharing it openly, and adapting when needed.

Required for this Role:

• Functional or executive-level leadership experience. 7+ years of management experience while remaining willing and able to perform individual-contributor-level work.
• Track record of taking products from 0 to 1, ideally including experience as an early or founding product leader at a startup or similarly entrepreneurial organization.
• Genuine product research experience, including designing, running, and synthesizing qualitative and quantitative research and experiments and using evidence to drive roadmap decisions.
• Direct experience shipping AI-enabled product features 
• Experience in higher education, government benefits, public-sector technology, or another highly regulated or administratively complex environment.
• Strong product judgment under resource constraints, including the ability to prioritize learning and impact over feature volume.
• Experience building products for populations navigating complex or high-stakes systems.

Other Logistics

• Location: Fully Remote
• Full-time: 5-day work week, 40-45 hours 
• Salary: $170k + 10% annual performance bonus; SBNC benchmarks compensation on a nonprofit pay scale and is committed to transparent, equitable pay practices. Note that salaries/benefits are not negotiable so please ensure that this compensation package works for you before applying. 

We take care of our employees by providing the following perks and benefits (please note that some of the benefits do not apply to temporary employees) : 

• Medical insurance (100% Paid Employee Only Coverage, 50% for dependents)
• Flexible PTO (after a 90-day introductory period)
• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave
• 11 federally recognized holidays
• Paid Org-wide office closures: March (1 week); July (1 week); November (1 week); End of year (2 weeks)
• Starter 401(k) retirement plan
• Home office setup stipend

As a small nonprofit, please note that we do not, at present, provide the following benefits.

• Disability income insurance or life insurance
• Employer matches for retirement contributions
• Dental or vision insurance

Remote Work & Sponsorship

Candidates must reside within the 50 states or District of Columbia and have full authorization to work in the 50 U.S. states & the District of Columbia (international work abroad, including the U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and other islands are excluded). In addition, SBNC doesn't offer employment visa sponsorship.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Building an inclusive, high-performing team that is diverse across lines of personal identity is integral to our success and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

This means we do not discriminate against any job applicant or employee because of their race, ethnicity, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This applies to all terms and conditions of employment.

We actively strive and evolve to develop and maintain workspaces that are fully inclusive. We encourage candidates from underrepresented groups to apply.