Principal Product Manager

Description

Lead the Way to Intelligent Banking with Us!

You might not think about what happens behind the scenes when you check your bank balance or deposit a check from your phone, but we do. Every day.

Kinective empowers banks and credit unions to move beyond keeping up with technology to shaping the future of banking. Our platform seamlessly connects the right tools, delivers real-time data, and drives smarter operations for more than 4,000 financial institutions nationwide. We are a fast-growing team built on individual ownership, company-wide collaboration, and setting industry-leading standards. Here, new ideas are encouraged, candid feedback is welcomed, and your growth truly matters as much as the company’s. At Kinective, we are leading the way to intelligent banking together and enjoying the journey along the way.

Why This Role Matters

Every product decision at Kinective touches a community bank or credit union - real institutions with real constraints, real regulators, and real members depending on them. This role exists to make sure we never lose sight of that.

The Principal Product Manager of ourFI Solutions & Platform Strategy is one of the most important bridges between the financial institutions we serve and the product teams building for them. You bring the credibility, judgment, and operational fluency of someone who has lived inside the FI world - and you use it to inform and sharpen the product and platform decisions we make.

This role sits at the intersection of client reality and product strategy. You will help validate what we build, strengthen how we position it, and ensure the product organization has the ground-truth FI insight it needs to make better decisions - alongside the SVPs of Product Strategy and Product Marketing who depend on that input.

What You’ll Own

FI Engagement & Client Validation

• Act as primary source of ground-truth FI insight - ensuring what we build is grounded in how financial institutions actually operate.
• Play a major, ongoing role in Kinective’s client advisory programs - including the Customer Advisory Board (CAB), executive committee sessions, and client working groups - in close partnership with the Director of Product Marketing who leads these programs
• Validate major solution initiatives against real FI feedback before launch, ensuring the roadmap reflects what community banks and credit unions actually need
• Translate client conversations into clear, actionable insights the product team can act on - and flag gaps between what we’re building and what FIs will actually adopt
• Build and maintain direct relationships with FI executives, operations leaders, and technology teams to give Kinective ongoing access to operational ground truth
• Equip the SVPs of Product Strategy and Product Marketing with the FI insight and context they need to make roadmap, positioning, and go-to-market decisions

Cross-Product Platform Strategy

• Contribute to Kinective’s cross-product platform strategy by bringing a client-grounded perspective to how our solutions connect and deliver value together
• Contribute to the cross-product roadmap by surfacing integration friction, workflow gaps, and multi-product opportunities identified through direct FI engagement
• Map end-to-end FI workflows - from digital onboarding to core ledger posting to fraud decisioning - and identify where module handoffs break down for clients
• Serve as connective tissue between product teams, engineering, and professional services to help prioritize integration improvements that benefit the full platform
• Pressure-test product and roadmap decisions against real FI operations: how institutions are staffed, how decisions get made, what regulatory compliance looks like in practice

AI Solution Strategy & Validation

• Ensure our AI investments are grounded in how FIs can actually adopt and benefit from them
• Partner with Product Strategy leadership to validate Kinective’s AI-powered solution bundles against real FI workflows, constraints, and adoption readiness
• Help FI clients articulate the value of AI-first banking in terms they can present to their own boards - and feed those conversations back as product insight
• Identify where AI adoption pressure, data fragmentation, and lean FI teams create the highest-value opportunities for Kinective’s platform to differentiate
• Surface market intelligence on AI adoption trends, regulatory signals, and fintech disruption to inform the product roadmap

Go-to-Market & Stakeholder Alignment

• Bridge client reality and internal execution - helping product, marketing, and sales speak credibly to FI buyers
• Partner with Product Marketing to ensure value propositions and messaging are framed around outcomes that FI executives recognize and care about
• Review sales and marketing materials to ensure they reflect how FIs actually think about their problems - and flag when positioning misses the mark
• Serve as a subject matter resource for sales on complex FI deals, helping navigate procurement dynamics and stakeholder structures
• Align product, engineering, professional services, and GTM teams around client-validated priorities - without direct authority over any of them

How We’ll Measure Success

• FI validation coverage: every major solution initiative has documented FI feedback before launch
• CAB engagement quality: depth and consistency of participation in client advisory programs, and evidence that FI input shapes roadmap decisions
• Platform coherence: measurable reduction in cross-product friction, evidenced by client adoption of multi-product solutions and reduced implementation complexity
• Internal enablement: SVPs of Product Strategy and Product Marketing rate you as a high-value source of FI insight that improves their decision-making
• GTM alignment: sales and marketing materials pass the “would an FI exec believe this?” test; internal teams value your input in deal conversations

Success here isn’t about checking boxes - it’s about propelling Kinective’s mission to lead the way to intelligent banking. You must bring excellence to your craft, balance resourcefulness with respect, share and celebrate unique expertise and diverse perspectives, and continuously raise the bar as we innovate and grow.

Necessary Qualifications & Competencies

We are seeking a candidate who fits one of the following profiles. Both require deep FI credibility. Neither requires a traditional product management background.

Profile A: The FI Executive / Digital Banker

• VP-level or equivalent experience at a community bank, credit union, or regional financial institution - you have been in the room where decisions get made
• Broad exposure across FI functions: operations, technology, lending, retail banking, fraud, or compliance - with hands-on experience managing core migrations, middleware implementations, or origination system overhauls
• Deep familiarity with the challenges facing community FIs today: data fragmentation, AI adoption pressure, consolidation dynamics, fraud escalation, and doing more with leaner teams
• Existing relationships within the community FI ecosystem - with peers, vendors, or industry associations - that give you immediate credibility and access
• No product management experience required. We will teach you how we work. You teach us how FIs work.

Profile B: The Platform Product Manager with FI Depth

• 5+ years in software product management, specifically managing complex platform ecosystems, integrations, or API-driven products in fintech or enterprise SaaS
• Proven experience working across fragmented product lines to create platform coherence - ideally where connectivity or data was the core value proposition
• Non-negotiable: direct, hands-on experience working with community FI clients. You have sat across from FI executives and earned their trust as a peer - not as a vendor pitching features
• You understand the difference between how FIs are sold to and how they actually make decisions internally

Skills & Working style (both profiles)

• Systems thinking: you can see how a change in one module ripples across an entire FI’s operation - and across Kinective’s platform
• Technical fluency: comfortable discussing APIs, data schemas, and integration architecture with engineers while translating the same decisions into business impact for the C-suite
• Influence without authority: you have navigated complex organizations to drive alignment across competing priorities
• Communication clarity: you translate complex FI operations into crisp product direction, and complex product capabilities into outcomes FI executives care about
• Comfort with ambiguity: this is a senior IC role where credibility, relationships, and judgment are the asset. You will help define what success looks like - not wait for someone to hand it to you

What This Role Is Not

• This is not a people manager role. There are no direct reports.
• This is not a role defined by owning a single product vertical, feature backlog, or full roadmap.
• This is not viable without deep FI fluency. Platform PM credentials alone are not sufficient.
• This is not a traditional PM role - your leverage is insight, credibility, and influence, not sprint velocity.

Pay, Benefits & Total Rewards

$120,000 - $140,000 base salary + 10% annual bonus potential

The salary range listed reflects the minimum and maximum for this role. Individual compensation is based on experience, qualifications, job-related skills, location, and internal equity, and most offers are not made at the top of the range.

Base pay is one part of Kinective’s Total Rewards package. Depending on the role, employees may also be eligible for bonuses, commissions, or equity. All employees have access to a competitive benefits package designed to support health, well-being, and financial security, including:

• Comprehensive health coverage (medical, dental, vision, prescriptions, life & disability)
• Flexible PTO, 11 company holidays, and generous parental and caregiver leave
• An immediately vested 401(k) with company contributions
• Wellness resources and professional development opportunities

If you’ve made it this far, we’d love to hear from you. Click Apply to start the conversation, even if you’re not sure you check every box. Learn more about Kinective at www.kinective.io.

Please note that this role does not currently offer sponsorship opportunities.