Product Director, Higher Education & School Boards

About the role

Product Director, Higher Education & School Boards Unit4 holds a leading position in enterprise resource planning and financial management for universities, colleges, and the Canadian K-12 school board sector. This role sits at the intersection of significant institutional transformation, driven by funding pressures, complex research demands, and expectations for modern digital services. School boards manage strict compliance requirements, trustee oversight, and intricate operational structures spread across wide geographic areas. The Product Director for Higher Education and K-12 is accountable for defining and executing the product vision, strategy, and roadmap that positions Unit4 as the definitive platform for these markets. This position is fundamentally a product leadership role, not account management or advisory. You will utilize dedicated engineering capacity to build deep vertical capabilities that differentiate Unit4 in the market. These capabilities must address the critical needs of university CFOs managing complex research portfolios, registrars handling intricate financial aid scenarios, and business leaders within school boards managing provincial budget allocations. Your primary mission is to own the vertical product strategy end-to-end. The ideal candidate has a history of developing enterprise software specifically for higher education and K-12 school boards. You possess a thorough understanding of funding mechanisms, regulatory compliance obligations, and the limitations of existing systems. You have successfully delivered features that provide tangible value to research finance officers, HR directors, and school board finance teams. Artificial intelligence is transforming the landscape for research institutions and administrative functions simultaneously. Research organizations are managing AI-assisted grant processes, evolving indirect cost structures, and new data governance mandates from funding bodies. Administratively, AI offers substantial efficiency opportunities in finance, procurement, and human resources. The critical challenge lies in capturing these efficiencies while upholding rigorous data governance, academic integrity, and accreditation standards. This role requires a balanced perspective capable of building a roadmap that empowers institutions to advance with confidence.

Key Responsibilities You will own the strategic vision, roadmap, and multi-horizon planning for Higher Education and K-12 product lines. This includes aligning these initiatives with Unit4's broader platform strategy and commercial objectives. You will lead a prioritized product backlog, leveraging dedicated engineering capacity. This involves defining clear outcomes, success metrics, release plans, and quality standards. You will translate deep sector expertise into specific, investment-backed product requirements. This includes crafting problem statements, assessing opportunity size, and making build-versus-partner decisions. You will define industry-specific solution blueprints, reference configurations, and pre-built templates tailored to HE and K-12 institutions. You will collaborate closely with horizontal product teams to ensure requirements from both sectors are reflected in platform investment across finance, HR, procurement, and research management. You will partner with the Industry Growth Director on launch readiness, pricing strategy, packaging, and field enablement for new capabilities. You will engage directly with strategic customers and the HE Industry Board to validate roadmap direction, co-innovate, and capture evidence of outcomes. You will ensure that regulatory, accessibility, research-compliance, and provincial requirements are systematically integrated into the roadmap across all supported regions. You will monitor the competitive landscape, tracking the initiatives of Ellucian, Workday, Microsoft, Tribal Group, and others, and assessing the implications for Unit4's positioning. You will work with partners to extend the value proposition for HE and K-12 customers. You will own feature outcomes, adoption, and usage metrics. This includes defining clear customer impact goals and tracking performance after launch. You will serve as the central internal authority on Higher Education and K-12 verticals, equipping product marketing, analysts, and pre-sales teams with the necessary industry knowledge.

Required Qualifications You demonstrate proven product management experience building enterprise software, such as ERP, finance systems, or enterprise SaaS, for higher education or K-12 school boards. You have shipped products used by HE finance teams, research administrators, or school board operations staff based on real-world experience, not just academic study. You possess deep working knowledge of higher education finance, including research grant accounting, fund accounting, and endowment financial structures. For the K-12 domain, you have extensive working knowledge of provincial ministry funding formulas, trustee governance and board reporting, school-level budget delegation, and collective agreement administration. You have a clear understanding of student lifecycle interfaces, such as financial aid and tuition management, and the demands they place on the ERP layer. You can articulate how AI is reshaping research enterprises and administrative operations, and you can define responsible, governance-compliant product decisions within this context. You operate with a commercial mindset, understanding how product choices influence ARR, win rates, and customer retention. You communicate effectively at the level of CFOs, Vice Presidents of Finance, Superintendents of Business, and senior academic and school board leadership. You have substantial experience in product management for enterprise SaaS platforms. You have a deep understanding of professional services business models, including project-based delivery, utilization, billing, scheduling, and compliance. You excel at influencing without formal authority in complex, matrixed organizational settings. You can translate complex industry requirements into scalable product solutions. You possess excellent communication, analytical, and stakeholder engagement skills.