Remote Product Discovery Lead

NelNET; Nashville (TN); Remote; USD 140,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

HSA and FSA

401K/student loan repayment

Life insurance & AD&D

Employee assistance program

Stock purchase program

Tuition reimbursement

Incentive pay

Disability insurance

Wellness program

Job summary

Nelnet is seeking a Product Discovery Manager to lead customer and market discovery activities that identify, evaluate, and validate product opportunities. This role translates ambiguous business opportunities into focused research questions, gathers customer evidence, identifies meaningful patterns, and develops recommendations for product direction.

The position uses discovery, research, prototyping, and experimentation to reduce uncertainty before significant product investment is made.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Sociology, Marketing, Research, Product Management, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• Advanced degree or relevant professional training in user experience research, product management, design, customer research, or a related discipline.
• 5+ years of experience in product discovery, user research, product management, product design, customer research, innovation, or a related discipline.
• Experience independently planning and conducting customer or user discovery and translating findings into actionable recommendations.

Responsibilities

• Lead product and customer discovery activities to understand customer needs, behaviors, workflows, pain points, and unmet opportunities.
• Define research questions, hypotheses, target audiences, and evidence criteria needed to evaluate product and business opportunities.
• Recruit and engage customers, users, buyers, subject‑matter experts, and other relevant participants to gather actionable insights.
• Conduct interviews, workflow observations, concept testing, and other qualitative or quantitative research activities appropriate to the business question.
• Synthesize customer and market evidence into clear themes, Jobs to Be Done, opportunity areas, product requirements, and recommendations.
• Develop and test prototypes, concepts, workflows, and other representations of potential solutions to accelerate learning and reduce product risk.
• Evaluate discovery findings and recommend whether opportunities should advance, change direction, or be discontinued based on available evidence.
• Partner with product, design, technology, commercial, and business stakeholders to translate insights into product strategy and development priorities.
• Establish scalable discovery practices, research repositories, templates, tools, and documentation that improve the quality and speed of future discovery work.
• Communicate findings and recommendations clearly to stakeholders, using evidence and business context to influence decisions.

Skills

Research & Information Gathering

Feedback Gathering & Analysis

Critical Thinking

UX/UI Design (Figma, Adobe XD)

Strategic Thinking

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Design, HCI, Psychology, Sociology, Marketing, Research, Product Management, or related field

Job description

Nelnet is seeking a Product Discovery Manager to lead customer and market discovery activities that identify, evaluate, and validate product opportunities. This role translates ambiguous business opportunities into focused research questions, gathers customer evidence, identifies meaningful patterns, and develops recommendations for product direction.

The position uses discovery, research, prototyping, and experimentation to reduce uncertainty before significant product investment is made.