Description:
We are a rapidly growing fintech company on a mission to revolutionize small business lending, and we believe the strategic use of data and models is the key to achieving this goal. Our proprietary platform leverages data and technology to provide fast and flexible financing to underserved businesses across the country. We are seeking an experienced and highly analytical Senior Product Manager to drive the optimization and integration of our third-party decision engine with our proprietary core applications. This role is central to our mission, directly impacting our ability to assess risk, streamline the offer drafting process, and increase funding velocity within the Revenue-Based Financing space.
You will act as the primary liaison between our pricing and strategy, underwriting, engineering, and third-party vendor teams. This role will own complex projects within the decisioning space, ensuring our capabilities are world-class, compliant, and seamlessly integrated into our business workflow. The role will report directly to the Group Product Manager of Decisioning.
In This Role You Will
- Decision Engine Optimization: Own the product roadmap for the decision engine, focusing on maximizing approval rates and minimizing risk exposure, while also balancing this against improving the speed and accuracy of offer generation across multiple workstreams to drive funding volume.
- Integration & Workflow: Manage the API integrations and data exchange between the third-party decision engine and our internal core applications. Implement technical solutions to optimize data flow stability, scalability, and accuracy.
- Project Ownership: Own complex projects within the decisioning and offer drafting space, driving them from ideation through launch and post-release analysis.
- Liason Role: Act as the liason between engineers and business stakeholders (Pricing & Strategy, Underwriting, Sales). You must be able to explain technical concepts to non-technical team members and vice versa.
- Performance & Analysis: Define and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and execute A/B tests to continuously refine decisioning parameters, communicating solutions and impacts to stakeholders.
- Mentorship/Coaching: Mentor newer team members within the product organization, raising issues, suggestions, and proposing new ideas to increase development and engagement of your team members.
- Business Knowledge: Educate and coach others on business processes related to financing and offer drafting. Participate actively in identifying and proposing business process improvements across the larger workstream.
- Market & Systems Knowledge: Expand product knowledge to include similar internal and competitive systems, leveraging this market intelligence to enable effective product decision-making.
Why You Should Apply
- Critical role: We are rapidly growing and on a mission to revolutionize small business lending. This role is critical to continuing on that trajectory by leveraging data, models, and decision engines.
- Mission driven company: Forward is a trusted source of fast, flexible funding for small businesses that have often been underserved by traditional financing options. When you join the team, you will help ensure all small businesses have access to the financial support they need to succeed.
- Flexibility is a top priority: Our employees are empowered to choose where they want to work (whether that’s from home, in the office, or a combination of both) with flexible hours.
Role Requirements
- 5+ years of product management experience, preferably in FinTech, lending, or a high-growth financial services environment.
- 2+ years of direct experience managing and optimizing a decision engine (e.g. Taktile, FICO Blaze, Zoot, Encino, Provenir, Lendflow, or similar complex rules/scoring engines) within a lending context (MCA, SMB, Credit Card, or related).
- Solid understanding of the Merchant Cash Advance (MCA) or Revenue Based Financing lifecycle.
- Demonstrated experience with API integrations and managing complex data flows between disparate systems.
- Strong analytical skills with a proven track record of using data (SQL, Python, or advanced Excel) to define product strategy and measure results.
- A proven ability to be coachable, open to receiving and implementing feedback and engaging in complex strategic evaluations throughout the product lifecycle.
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field.
- Professionalism & Judgment: Display exceptional professionalism (punctuality, attitude, teamwork) and demonstrate sound judgment in all product decisions, embodying all of the Forward core values.