Principal Product Manager

kiavi; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive benefits

Remote-friendly

Job summary

Kiavi is seeking a Principal Data Product Manager to partner with Data leadership and drive ML, GenAI, and data products from concept to production across valuation, underwriting and construction draws. You will own a portfolio of AI/ML initiatives and be accountable for measurable business outcomes.

You will collaborate with data science, engineering, and business teams, articulate strong business cases, and align priorities with executives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree preferred.
• Experience leading data/ML product initiatives with cross-functional teams.
• Strong business acumen with ability to articulate ROI and value.

Responsibilities

• Strategize and plan the Data XFN roadmap with quarterly OKRs.
• Partner with data leadership to drive ML, GenAI, and data products to production.
• Develop and defend business cases with conservative and aggressive forecasts.

Skills

Data leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Strategy and planning

Executive communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in a relevant field

MS/PhD in quantitative field

Tools

SQL

Python

ML platforms

Job description

Kiavi is one of the nation's largest private lenders to residential real estate investors (REIs). We harness the power of data & technology to offer our customers a simpler, more reliable, and faster way to access the capital they need to scale their businesses.

Formerly known as LendingHome, we're committed to helping REIs revitalize the approximately $25 trillion worth of aged U.S. housing stock to provide move-in ready homes and rental housing for millions of Americans across the country.

Combining our technology and industry expertise, Kiavi has grown to a team of over 500 and has won many awards over the years including Forbes Fintech 50, Finovate Awards, Best Digital Mortgage Platform, Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, and many more.

Loans Funded: $30 billion in loans funded

Homes financed: 100,000+ projects funded for our customers across the country

Geography: 49 states + D.C. where we lend to REIs so they can revitalize neighborhoods

Employees: Over 500 employees with competitive benefits and perks

This position can be based remotely in any of our approved hiring regions. Our hybrid distributed workforce philosophy allows us to find the best talent in the country and build diverse teams, while allowing our colleagues to work from the location that works best for them.

Identity Verification Notice: To ensure the security and integrity of our hiring process, all candidates are required to complete a secure identity verification. This process uses biometric and device validation to confirm identity and liveness. All data is handled securely in accordance with our privacy policy.

About Us

Kiavi and Figure have joined forces to build a premier mortgage marketplace that automates and streamlines financial services for businesses and consumers. Driven by advanced data and technology, we are making the process of funding the next deal simpler, faster, and significantly more reliable.

The Role

This Principal Data PM partners with Data leadership to drive ML, GenAI, and data products from concept to production, ensuring cross-functional execution and measurable business outcomes. You drive the execution of a portfolio of ML, GenAI and data products, and you answer for what they save or earn, not just what they launch. The Data team often relies on other teams to get products in front of customers, so coordination, communication, planning and execution are paramount.

You act as a strong partner to Data leadership, driving execution with the Data leaders driving organization's technical direction or team priorities. You win priority with business cases, and you align leaders before the big meeting, not during it. You go deep enough to understand architecture calls with engineers, and you build working prototypes yourself with AI tools.

The portfolio spans:

• ML & AI models that automate lending decisions across valuation, underwriting and construction draws
• GenAI document understanding that classifies, extracts and reviews loan documents
• Internal tools that put data in front of Risk, Operations and Sales teams
• Third-party data partnerships, such as property, listings, lien and zoning data
• Data platform priorities for MLOps, Data Engineering and Analytics

Responsibilities

Strategy and planning

• Collaborate with Data leadership to operationalize the Data XFN roadmap and track its quarterly OKRs. Tie every major initiative to a key result, every result to a goal, with an owner on each contributing team.
• Facilitate data leadership forums as decision meetings, not status updates. Bring the hard calls to the table and set an example by queuing up data for each decision.
• Look past the committed roadmap. Find new data and AI opportunities and write them up with size, ROI, risk and a go/no-go recommendation.
• Partner with relevant partners to develop program milestones, track progress, handle cross-team dependencies, mitigate risks and run cross-team communications.
• Manage the priorities of multiple data science and development teams, ensuring alignment and streamlined execution of multiple concurrent projects

Business cases and value realization

• Write business cases that Finance signs off on before work starts, with conservative and aggressive forecasts.
• Measure business outcomes (cost, quality, hours saved) as hard as model accuracy. A live model that doesn't move the business metric isn't a win yet.
• Work with FP&A and Operations to turn efficiency gains into approved capacity and budget changes.
• Find cost savings in vendor spend