Product Manager, Banking

Company Description

Novo is a venture-backed fintech that simplifies banking for small businesses. Since our Fall 2018 beta launch, we've expanded offerings from free checking accounts and debit cards to lending products, business tools (invoices, bookkeeping, and more), and integrations.Today, Novo is a powerfully simple banking platform that serves over 250,000 small businesses. In addition to providing smart tools built for entrepreneurs to better run and grow their businesses, Novo has processed billions in transactions in partnership with a number of established banking partners.

Our vision is to be the go-to platform serving small businesses – from launch to everyday – so business owners can focus on growing, while Novo provides seamless money movement, money storage, and access to capital. We'd like to look back 5–10 years from now and know that we helped new generations of small businesses succeed because of the work we did at Novo. Novo raised $170 million in venture capital and is backed by leading investors, including Stripes, Valar Ventures, Crosslink Capital, and Notable Capital (formerly GGV). Learn more at https://www.novo.co.

Role Description

Novo is seeking a highly experienced and motivated product manager to own and scale our core banking experience — the accounts, money movement, cards, and program infrastructure that power banking for over 250,000 small businesses. This role is critical to ensuring the reliability, usability, and depth of the products at the heart of Novo, supporting our rapidly expanding customer base and business operations. The ideal candidate is a hands-on product leader who can set product direction for complex, regulated financial products, partner closely with Engineering, Design, Risk, and Compliance, and work hand-in-hand with banking partners to ship reliable, secure, high-quality experiences within a dynamic, regulated fintech environment.

Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Leadership

• Own the strategy, roadmap, and execution for Novo's core banking products, including deposit accounts, money movement, cards, and the underlying program infrastructure.

• Develop a clear point of view for each product — defining who it serves, what value it delivers, and why it resonates — so Novo serves the right small businesses deeply rather than building for everyone and no one.

• Serve as a key product partner to the executive team, translating company objectives and customer insight into a prioritized banking roadmap.

• Balance near-term delivery with the platform and product depth investments needed to support long-term growth and retention.

Banking Products & Money Movement

• Own the end-to-end experience for account opening, funding, deposits, and money-movement flows (ACH, wires, transfers, bill pay, and card transactions), partnering with Engineering on the ledger, payments rails, and card systems beneath them.

• Define and improve the products that drive deposits, money storage, and money movement, deepening engagement and increasing the number of Novo products each customer uses.

• Partner with the team to evaluate and improve partner-bank and program economics, ensuring the products we ship are both valuable to customers and sustainable for the business.

• Translate complex regulatory, banking-partner, and operational requirements into intuitive, simple experiences for small business owners.

Discovery, Execution & Quality

• Run a rigorous discovery process grounded in customer research, usage data, and cohort analysis to identify the highest-impact opportunities across the banking experience.

• Favor rigorous, cohort-based analysis over surface-level correlation when evaluating performance and prioritizing investment, while staying comfortable acting on directional data when speed and urgency demand it.

• Write clear specs, define success metrics, and partner with Engineering and Design to ship reliable, secure, high-quality features on a predictable cadence.

• Monitor product performance and key metrics, distinguish signal from noise, and drive timely iteration when results diverge from expectations.

Reliability, Risk & Compliance

• Partner with Engineering, InfoSec, and Operations to ensure banking products meet the reliability, availability, and data-integrity bar required in a regulated financial environment.

• Embed risk, fraud, security, and regulatory requirements into the product process from the start, partnering with Risk, Compliance, and Legal to ship products responsibly.

• Support the reporting and product controls required by banking partners, regulators, and internal stakeholders.

• Treat trust as a first-class product requirement, recognizing that banking and financial products demand a higher threshold of trust than any consumer app.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner closely with Engineering and Design leadership to align on roadmap, scope, and sequencing, and to turn product strategy into reliable delivery.

• Collaborate with Growth, Marketing, Operations, and Finance to set targets, track KPIs, and translate strategy into operating plans.

• Manage product relationships and integrations with banking partners and key third-party vendors, navigating the technical and regulatory requirements inherent to a fintech company.

• Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders, from individual contributors to the executive team and board.

Strategic Planning & Execution

• Contribute to strategic planning for future product needs and the broader company roadmap.

• Define and track the product metrics that matter, including activation, engagement, retention, multi-product adoption, and reliability, holding the organization accountable to outcomes.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of progressive experience in product management, with experience owning complex, technical, or platform products (preferably in fintech, financial services, banking, or payments).

• Demonstrable track record of shipping reliable, customer-facing products in a high-growth, regulated environment, ideally involving money movement, payments, cards, deposits, or other financial infrastructure.

• Strong understanding of banking and fintech fundamentals, including how accounts, money movement, cards, deposits, and partner-bank and program infrastructure work together.

• Proven ability to partner with and influence Engineering and Design, write clear specs, and ship high-quality software on a predictable cadence.

• Strong analytical skills and fluency with product and cohort data, with the judgment to know when data is conclusive versus directional.

• Experience working with Risk, Compliance, and Legal to ship products within regulatory constraints, and a track record of treating security, trust, and reliability as core product requirements.

• Strong product sense and the ability to give products a clear point of view and value proposition for a defined customer.

• Proven ability to manage complex cross-functional initiatives and communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders, including leadership.

• Strong problem-solving skills and a proactive, data-driven approach to product.

• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, evolving startup environment.

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree or relevant technical background preferred.