Product Manager, HRS Grants

Huron helps its clients drive growth, enhance performance and sustain leadership in the markets they serve. We collaborate with education organizations to develop strategies and implement solutions that enable the transformative change our clients need to own their future. Together, we empower clients to drive innovation, create sustainable funding streams and deliver better student outcomes. Today, leaders of higher education institutions and academic medical centers are spending too much time reacting to market forces, rather than focusing on the essential priorities that help students, faculty and staff thrive. The most productive path forward requires an intentional approach and innovative thinking, whereby stakeholders across the entire institution rally around a shared vision and embrace the hard work of effecting change. You’ll help our clients to achieve organizational effectiveness, improve student outcomes, implement new technologies and align resources and investments to ensure long-term sustainability. Join our team as the expert you are now and create your future. The Research Enterprise Solutions team works with hospitals, universities, cancer centers, academic medical centers, and research institutions to improve research administration performance through transformative change. Huron provides flexible, scalable, and configurable solutions that streamline workflows, reduce administrative burden, and help clients focus more time on their research mission. The Product Manager for HRS Grants will help shape the next generation of Huron Research Suite grants capabilities as Huron transitions from legacy research administration solutions to a single, integrated, cloud-based product. This role is accountable for product strategy, market understanding, roadmap direction, business outcomes, and cross-functional alignment for grants-related capabilities. Role Overview The Product Manager is responsible for defining the problems HRS Grants should solve, the customers and users it should serve, the product capabilities required to create value, and the business outcomes the product must achieve. This role translates customer needs, market trends, Huron's research administration point of view, and product performance data into an outcome-driven roadmap and market-facing product direction. The role requires strong research administration domain expertise, especially in grants management, proposal development, award negotiation, sponsored projects administration, and related institutional workflows. The ideal candidate also brings the technical fluency needed to partner credibly with architecture, engineering, QA, DevOps/SRE, implementation, support, sales, customer success, consulting, and customer stakeholders on complex SaaS product decisions. This Product Manager will serve as the strategic business owner for HRS Grants capabilities with significant input into the broader HRS Suite, setting vision, defining priorities, validating market opportunities, and ensuring Huron's distinctive expertise is reflected in differentiated software solutions. PM will drive outcomes through strong stakeholder management across executives, consultants, and customers and a close partnership with Engineering, resulting in clear product direction, aligned cross-functional execution, and shared ownership of delivery. Product Strategy & Vision Define and communicate the product vision for HRS Grants, including a multi-year view of the product, market, customer needs, and business opportunities. Translate Huron's research administration point of view, industry standards, market trends, and customer problems into strategic product themes, outcomes, and roadmap priorities. Identify growth opportunities and determine the investment, organizational readiness, and cross-functional support required to achieve target business outcomes. Position of HRS Grants based on the market problems it solves, the value it creates, and Huron's strengths and differentiation. Market Awareness, Customer Discovery & Differentiation Lead customer discovery with clients, prospects, advisory groups, implementation teams, support teams, and internal stakeholders to understand unmet needs and buy drivers. Identify and prioritize personas and use cases across research administrators, investigators, departmental users, central office teams, compliance stakeholders, and institutional leadership. Track market trends, regulatory and operational changes, competitor capabilities, alternative solutions, and emerging customer expectations that may affect HRS Grants. Use win/loss insights to understand why prospects buy or do not buy, how customers evaluate solutions, and where HRS Grants can strengthen differentiation. Assess and leverage Huron assets, including product capabilities, research administration expertise, implementation of knowledge, consulting services, data assets, and partner relationships. Product Roadmap, Requirements & Business Cases Build and maintain an outcome-driven roadmap that provides a clear path to the HRS Grants product vision and business objectives. Validate product opportunities and develop initiative business cases that define target outcomes, customer value, investment needs, dependencies, risks, and success measures. Develop epics, features, and high-level product requirements that communicate what capabilities are needed and why they matter to customers and the business. Prioritize roadmap investments across growth, retention, customer adoption, implementation efficiency, migration needs, modernization, technical health, and margin considerations. Partner with UX, architecture, engineering, QA, implementation, support, and customer-facing teams to ensure delivery planning remains aligned with product strategy and expected outcomes. Support the transition from legacy research administration solutions to an integrated cloud-based Huron Research Suite product through capability rationalization, workflow alignment, migration planning, and adoption strategy. Grants Domain Leadership Serve as a product leader for grants-related capabilities across the sponsored research lifecycle, including proposal development, institutional routing and approvals, award negotiation, award setup, grants management, compliance workflows, and related research administration processes. Develop a deep understanding of how HRS Grants supports institutional research operations and how grants capabilities interact with other Huron Research Suite modules and shared services. Engage senior client advisors, development partners, and customer community members to validate product strategy, roadmap direction, workflow design, and market fit. Identify opportunities to reduce administrative burden, improve workflow efficiency, strengthen compliance support, improve usability, and increase customer adoption. Represent customer and user needs in strategic product discussions while balancing business value, technical feasibility, implementation impact, and long-term platform direction. Technical Product Leadership Partner with architects, engineering leaders, QA, DevOps/SRE, and application teams to ensure product decisions are technically sound, scalable, reliable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with Huron's long-term platform strategy. Bring working knowledge of modern SaaS products, cloud-based delivery, modular architectures or microservices, APIs, integrations, data flows, identity and access management, configuration, feature management, reporting, auditability, and enterprise security expectations. Evaluate product and technical tradeoffs related to performance, scalability, resiliency, observability, operational readiness, implementation complexity, cost of goods sold, FinOps impacts, backward compatibility, and time to market. Ensure product requirements include appropriate non-functional considerations, such as performance, usability, configurability, reliability, security, extensibility, maintainability, auditability, and compliance needs. Understand technical dependencies across Huron Research Suite modules and shared services to help sequence roadmap work in a way that supports predictable delivery and customer value. Balance new capabilities with platform modernization, technical debt reduction, reliability improvements, legacy transition needs, and customer-facing commitments. Stakeholder Communications & Go-to-Market Manage proactive product communications with relevant stakeholders from strategy through execution, including product leadership, engineering, consulting, sales, implementation, support, customer success, user education, and senior leaders. Serve as a customer-facing product representative in roadmap reviews, client interviews, advisory discussions, beta programs, customer community meetings, conference working sessions, and industry events. Partner with sales, marketing, consulting, implementation, support, and customer success teams to support market positioning, sales enablement, implementation readiness, customer adoption, and retention. Collaborate with Huron consulting leadership to identify ways HRS Grants can support services growth, differentiation, client value, and long-term customer success. Track product and portfolio performance, communicate strategy cross-functionally, and identify and escalate risks related to market alignment, customer commitments, technical dependencies, adoption, scope, cost, or timing. Product Profitability, Performance & KPIs Support strengthening the HRS Grants product business by understanding growth objectives, revenue opportunities, sales pipeline, customer retention, product margins, cost drivers, and COGS considerations. Define, monitor, and communicate a balanced set of product KPIs, including objective attainment, customer adoption, usage, retention, CSAT, NPS, implementation efficiency, operational health, and release outcomes. Use product performance data, customer feedback, support trends, implementation lessons, and production insights to inform roadmap decisions and continuous product improvement. Partner with product leadership, finance, sales, and consulting stakeholders to understand pipeline, sales forecasts, revenue forecasts, product investment needs, and go-to-market changes. Identify risks to product adoption, customer value, competitive differentiation, revenue growth, margin, reliability, or scalability, and work cross-functionally to develop mitigation plans. Required Qualifications: Domain & Industry Expertise U.S. work authorization is required. Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience in research administration, science, business administration, computer science, management information systems, industrial engineering, mathematics, or another analytical, business, scientific, or technology-related field. Direct experience working in research administration, sponsored research, grants management, research operations, research compliance, or research administration software. Strong working knowledge of grants-related workflows such as proposal development, institutional approvals, award negotiation, award setup, sponsored projects administration, or related operational processes. Experience working at or with research-intensive institutions, such as hospitals, universities, cancer centers, academic medical centers, or research organizations. Product Management & Business Strategy Experience in Product Management, Technical Product Management, Product Strategy, Business Analysis, research administration consulting, software implementation, or a similar role supporting enterprise software. Proven ability to identify customer and market problems, define product opportunities, build business cases, establish roadmap priorities, and communicate product direction. Ability to develop epics, features, and high-level product requirements that connect customer value, business outcomes, and technical feasibility. Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams and align stakeholders around priorities, decisions, tradeoffs, and product outcomes. Familiarity with software development lifecycle concepts and Agile development practices. Technical Fluency Working understanding of modern SaaS products, cloud-based software delivery, enterprise application architecture, integrations, APIs, data flows, identity and access management, security, scalability, reliability, and operational readiness. Ability to read, understand, and discuss architectural diagrams, technical designs, integration approaches, data models, and non-functional requirements at a product leadership level. Ability to communicate technical concepts, tradeoffs, and risks clearly to non-technical stakeholders and business concepts to technical stakeholders. Comfort making product tradeoff recommendations that consider customer value, technical complexity, implementation impact, operational readiness, COGS, and long-term maintainability. Collaboration & Communication Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present clearly to customers, internal teams, executives, advisory groups, and cross-functional stakeholders. Strong facilitation, analytical thinking, and decision-making skills across both technical and non-technical topics. Demonstrated empathy for users and passion for delivering high-quality solutions that solve meaningful customer problems. Ability to work independently, manage competing priorities, adapt quickly, and drive clarity in complex or ambiguous situations. Ability to collaborate effectively across multiple time zones and with distributed teams, including teams in the U.S. and India. Preferred Qualifications 5+ years of experience as a Product Manager, Senior Product Manager, Technical Product Manager, Product Strategist, or similar enterprise software product role. Experience with Huron Research Suite, Huron Click, InfoEd, Cayuse, COEUS, or similar research administration solutions. Experience supporting grants management, proposal development, sponsored projects, award negotiation, or related research administration products. Experience with cloud-based SaaS products, multi-tenant platforms, enterprise software modernization, platform migration, or legacy-to-cloud product transitions. Familiarity with microservices or modular monoliths, REST or GraphQL APIs, event-driven systems, CI/CD practices, DevOps/SRE concepts, observability, FinOps, technical debt management, and security or compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO, or GDPR. Experience presenting to customer advisory boards, executive stakeholders, user groups, product community meetings, national research administration conferences, or industry events. Experience supporting go-to-market strategy, win/loss analysis, sales enablement, competitive positioning, product packaging, pricing inputs, or product P&L discussions. Proficiency with product-oriented tooling, road mapping, execution and collaboration (Azure DevOps, Aha!, Lucid, Jira, Figma, ...) Success Metrics HRS Grants product vision and roadmap are clearly defined, outcome-driven, and aligned with Huron's research administration strategy and business objectives. Product priorities reflect customer and buyer unmet needs, market trends, competitive differentiation, technical feasibility, and measurable business value. Product investments support growth, customer adoption, retention, CSAT, NPS, implementation efficiency, margin improvement, and long-term scalability. HRS Grants capabilities are adopted and valued by customers and users and measurably reduce administrative burden or improve research administration outcomes. The transition from legacy solutions to the integrated cloud-based Huron Research Suite is supported by clear product strategy, capability rationalization, migration considerations, and adoption planning. Internal stakeholders understand the product direction, market positioning, release value, customer impact, and ri