Product Manager, Lending Tech & Backlog Lead

Redwood Trust, Inc.; Irvine, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

Health plans

STD & LTD options

Life insurance

Fitness reimbursement

Paid parental leave

Paid time off

ESPP

401K matching

Job summary

Redwood Trust, Inc. in Irvine, CA is seeking a Product Manager to translate business priorities into a clear backlog for its Business Purpose Lending tech portfolio.

You will own requirements from discovery through release, aligning business and tech teams on outcomes and ensuring delivered capabilities meet business needs. The role collaborates with lending operations, underwriting, asset management, capital markets, accounting, technology, data, QA, and external partners to drive backlog

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.
• Five or more years of experience in product ownership, business analysis, technology delivery, or a closely related role.
• Demonstrated experience owning a backlog and translating business processes into clear, testable requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Experience working with Agile delivery teams through discovery, refinement, development, testing, release, and post-production support.
• Strong facilitation and communication skills, including the ability to explain complex issues, document decisions, and align stakeholders with competing priorities.
• Working knowledge of system integrations, data flows, reporting, access controls, testing practices, and production change management.
• Ability to analyze operational problems, distinguish symptoms from root causes, and recommend practical solutions supported by evidence.
• Ability to manage several workstreams, make timely decisions, and maintain accurate product documentation in a regulated environment.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain a prioritized product backlog that reflects business value, operational risk, regulatory requirements, dependencies, and available delivery capacity.
• Lead discovery with business stakeholders to define the problem, affected users, current process, desired outcome, scope, assumptions, constraints, and measurable success criteria.
• Write clear epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, and supporting requirements that developers and quality assurance analysts can execute without avoidable rework.
• Make day-to-day scope and priority decisions within the approved roadmap, and elevate decisions that affect funding, controls, policy, staffing, or committed delivery dates.
• Partner with solution architects, developers, administrators, data engineers, integration teams, and vendors to evaluate options and confirm that proposed designs meet business and control requirements.
• Plan releases with project and engineering leads by sequencing work, identifying dependencies, confirming readiness criteria, and communicating impacts to affected teams.
• Review completed work throughout the sprint, answer questions promptly, accept or reject stories against agreed criteria, and prevent incomplete work from moving forward.
• Coordinate business testing by identifying testers, preparing scenarios and expected results, tracking defects, collecting evidence, and obtaining documented approval before production release.
• Monitor product performance after release using defects, adoption, cycle time, user feedback, data quality, control performance, and other relevant measures; convert findings into backlog decisions.
• Maintain product documentation, decision history, release notes, process changes, training needs, and traceability from business request through deployed outcome.
• Support incident and production issue triage by clarifying business impact, helping establish priority, validating corrective action, and communicating status to stakeholders.
• Facilitate backlog refinement, sprint planning, demonstrations, stakeholder reviews, and other product forums with clear decisions, owners, and follow-up actions.
• Manage vendor-delivered product work by confirming requirements, reviewing deliverables, tracking commitments, and escalating performance or dependency concerns.
• Promote consistent product and delivery standards across teams, including clear definitions of ready and done, practical acceptance criteria, and disciplined change control.

Skills

Backlog management

Product ownership

Agile delivery

Stakeholder facilitation

Communication skills

System integrations understanding

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Salesforce

APIs

Job description

Redwood Trust, Inc. in Irvine, CA is seeking a Product Manager to translate business priorities into a clear backlog for its Business Purpose Lending tech portfolio.

You will own requirements from discovery through release, aligning business and tech teams on outcomes and ensuring delivered capabilities meet business needs. The role collaborates with lending operations, underwriting, asset management, capital markets, accounting, technology, data, QA, and external partners to drive backlog