Staff Product Manager, API and Partner Ecosystem

Illumia, LLC; Alpharetta (GA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible time off

Health insurance

Matched 401(k)

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

Illumia is seeking a Staff Product Manager to lead an API and partner-ecosystem initiative. You will define the strategy for a self-serve marketplace, decide on build vs. buy, and own the developer experience end-to-end, including documentation, testing, and security considerations.

You will work with a product trio and cross-functional partners across Higher Education and Healthcare verticals, shaping platform thinking and driving measurable outcomes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of product management experience, including platform, API, or developer-facing products.
• Experience launching an integration marketplace or partner program.
• Experience working with external partners on onboarding and certification.
• Strong discovery and user research practices influencing decisions.
• Technical credibility with API concepts like REST, authentication, versioning, and sandbox environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead discovery and strategy for an integration marketplace that connects clients with trusted partners.
• Own the API surface and partner onboarding, certification, and developer experience.
• Translate objectives into a backlog with key results and communicate strategy to executives.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams on authentication, data protection, and PCI scope.

Skills

API product management

Platform experience

Partner management

Discovery research

Technical credibility (API)

Stakeholder influence

Security/PCI familiarity

Job description

Staff Product Manager, API and Partner Ecosystem

Who we are:

Illumia is an industry leader in bringing the best integrated technology solutions to education, healthcare, and business campuses worldwide. Illumia was built on the collective expertise of two legacy cultures, and brings together people, technology, and insight to pioneer the art of the experience across the communities we serve. Be a part of this exciting organization and improving the lives of people doing mission-critical work.

This position is hybrid if local to our office in Alpharetta, GA or Scottsdale, AZ.

Why join our team?

We strive to provide the best customer experience in the industry and have succeeded with a single, strong motivating principle: We serve our user community.

Our success and growth are directly attributed to our people. Our newly named company is dedicated to fostering a culture of integrity, respect, and continuous personal development. We maintain an entrepreneurial spirit, where creativity, innovative problem-solving, and learning agility drive our day-to-day actions.

What you will be doing:

Illumia sits at the center of how campuses and health systems run — credentials, payments, access, dining, and the systems of record around them. Our clients want those systems connected to everything else they operate, and they want to make those connections themselves.

You will lead the discovery work for a self-service integration marketplace that connects clients with trusted partners through Illumia APIs. You own the problem space: how partners connect to us, how clients discover and enable them without Illumia in the middle, and how that exchange stays secure, supportable, and commercially sound. Build a first-hand understanding of where integration friction actually costs clients and partners, then test hypotheses about what would remove it before we commit engineering time to an answer. An early and consequential decision is build versus buy — whether the marketplace is built in-house or assembled on existing platforms. You own that recommendation.

Who you will work with:

You anchor a product trio with an Interaction Designer and an Engineering lead. Because a marketplace touches every product that exposes an API, you will work continuously with PMs and engineering leads across our Higher Education and Healthcare verticals, and with Platform and Security on authentication, data protection, and PCI scope. Partnerships and Alliances own partner recruitment and commercial terms — you shape the criteria they recruit against. You will also work directly with partner developers and with the campus and health system IT teams who run this in production.

Key Responsibilities and Duties

Discovery and strategy

• Engage continuously with clients, partner developers, and internal teams to build a current, first-hand understanding of where integration friction costs time and money today.
• Form hypotheses about what creates value for both sides of the marketplace and test them with lightweight experiments before committing to a build.
• Define the criteria for building the marketplace in-house versus adopting an existing platform, pressure-test the total cost of each path, and drive the assessment to an evidence-backed recommendation.

Marketplace, API, and partner experience

• Own the API surface as a product — what we expose, to whom, and how it evolves without breaking the partners who depend on it.
• Define what self-service means on each side: how a partner gets listed, certified, and supported, and how a client discovers, evaluates, and enables an integration on their own.
• Design the partner onboarding and certification model with Partnerships, Security, and Legal, and own the developer experience — documentation, sandbox, credentials, testing, and support.

Outcomes and influence

• Translate the squad's quarterly objective into a backlog, define the key results that show whether it was achieved, and build the feedback loops that tell the team whether what shipped is working.
• Represent the ecosystem strategy and its rationale to executives, and partner with Product Marketing on launch and positioning.
• Raise the bar for platform and API product thinking across the product organization.

What you bring to the table:

Required Qualifications

• Direct experience taking an integration marketplace, partner app directory, or partner integration program from zero to launch — not solely operating one that already existed.
• 8+ years of product management experience, including substantial time on platform, API, or developer-facing products.
• A track record of driving consequential build-versus-buy or platform investment decisions to a defensible recommendation.
• Demonstrated discovery practice: you run your own client and user research, and can point to decisions you changed because of what you learned.
• Experience working directly with external partners — recruiting, onboarding, and certifying them.
• Technical credibility with API product concepts: REST and event-driven patterns, authentication, versioning and deprecation, rate limiting, and sandboxes.
• The ability to operate with ambiguity and lead through influence across teams you do not manage.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands‑on evaluation or implementation of embedded iPaaS or unified API platforms (for example Prismatic, Paragon, Workato Embedded, or Merge).
• Familiarity with Silicon Valley Product Group principles and empowered product team ways of working.
• Experience with SaaS in higher education, healthcare, campus, or enterprise environments, including payments and PCI scope, FERPA and HIPAA obligations, and integration patterns such as SIS, EHR, ERP, SSO, and mobile credentials.

Essential Functions of the job:

The duties and responsibilities described in this job description are intended to represent the essential functions of the position as defined under applicable federal, state, and local labor laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These functions are the fundamental job duties required for successful performance.

What you get when you join our team:

• Flexible time off to include paid holidays and volunteer time.
• Robust health, dental, and vision insurance plans on your first day of employment
• Comprehensive employee assistance program (EAP)
• Employer-paid life insurance/AD&D/short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Flexible spending account (FSA) or health savings account (HSA)
• Matched 401(k)
• Employee stock purchase plan

Base salary offers for this position may vary based on factors such as location, skills, and relevant experience. Some positions may include additional compensation in the form of bonus, equity, or commissions.

Illumia is an equal employment opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, gender, age, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, protected military/veteran status, or any other protected factor.