Principal Product Manager, Core Banking
Summary
Principal Product Manager at SoFi to lead core banking product strategy, roadmapping, and execution for deposits, ledgers, and transactions, ensuring regulatory compliance and measurable outcomes in a regulated financial services environment.
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The Role
We are looking for a Principal Product Manager to drive product strategy and product management across the Core Banking domain and to own the most complex, cross-functional core related initiatives. This is a senior individual-contributor role: you set direction, connect product strategy to the platform's technical strategy, and deliver measurable outcomes in partnership with engineering.
You will operate with a high degree of autonomy, sponsoring pre-consensus bets with a written thesis, setting operating rhythms for the Core PM group, and influencing VP/SVP stakeholders through documented trade-offs. You will be an authority on how a core banking system actually works — down to posting logic — and pair that with strong traditional product-management judgment across pricing, risk, product performance, compliance, legal, GTM, and partnerships.
What you’ll do
- With your PM colleagues, own and drive product strategy and roadmap across multiple Core domains (e.g., deposits, postings/ledger, product factory, transactions) and the end-to-end core product.
- The most complex cross-company initiatives — including core conversion enablement and US market-expansion capabilities.
- Connecting product strategy to org-level technical strategy; anchoring build vs. buy vs. partner.
- Product GTM with measurable outcomes and documented reviews, in partnership with Marketing, Sales, Ops, and client teams.
- Operating models and planning frameworks for the Core PM group; standards and playbooks other PMs build on.
- Regulatory posture and responsible-AI principles embedded into the Core product.
Product Strategy & Roadmapping
- With your PM colleagues define and own multi-domain product strategy and the multi-quarter roadmap for Core Banking.
- Translate business, regulatory, and client needs into clear product outcomes; frame problems others haven't yet articulated.
- Conduct appropriate research and synthesize findings.
- Make informed trade-offs across speed, quality, scalability, and regulatory requirements.
Delivery & Execution
- Partner with Engineering Managers on prioritization, sequencing, planning, and dependency management across teams and squads.
- Set operating rhythms and planning frameworks; remove cross-team hurdles and drive quality and velocity improvements.
- Maintain a coherent, prioritized product direction as priorities shift.
Stakeholder & Client Collaboration
- Act as the senior product interface for business, operations, compliance, risk, legal, and technology stakeholders.
- Influence VP/SVP decisions through documented prioritization and signed trade-offs (timeline, risk, cost).
- Represent the Core product with external banking clients and internal SoFi Bank partners.
Technical & Platform Leadership
- Apply posting-logic-level understanding of core banking (accounts, double-entry ledger, postings, interest, product catalog, batch vs. real-time).
- Challenge business architectural assumptions at the system and cross-org level; prevent unnecessary complexity and maintenance burden.
- Ensure the Core product meets the requirements of US-chartered banking entities.
What you’ll need
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or relevant field
- Deep, hands-on understanding of the inner workings of a core banking system — ideally at the posting-logic / double-entry ledger level.
- A track record of building or product-managing a core banking product itself (a platform/vendor perspective) — as opposed to running core conversion or transformation programs inside a bank.
- Strong traditional product-management background across several of: pricing, risk, compliance, product performance, legal, communication, partnering, and go-to-market.
- A very good understanding of the US banking market and its regulatory environment.
- 10+ years of professional experience, with significant time in Product Management for complex, regulated technology platforms.
- Demonstrated ability to drive strategy across multiple product areas and lead the most complex cross-functional initiatives with a high degree of autonomy.
- Excellent written and verbal communication in English; able to shape company-level product communication and executive-ready written theses.
Nice to have
- LatAm core banking exposure and/or Spanish-language proficiency.
- Experience with modern, API-first, cloud-native core platforms and microservices architectures.
- Familiarity with the competitive landscape (e.g., Thought Machine, 10x, Mambu, Finxact, FIS, Fiserv, Jack Henry, Temenos).
- Experience selling or supporting a core platform for external financial-institution clients as well as an in-house bank.