Vice President, Product Strategy

Overview

Who We Are

UW Credit Union is a nearly $7 billion member-owned financial cooperative serving 400,000+ members across Wisconsin. Our mission is to improve the financial well-being of our members—and this Vice President ensures that mission is engineered directly into every product we bring to market.

We build and maintain our digital banking technology in-house, which sets us apart at our size. Our dedicated digital engineering team works alongside product owners and business leaders to develop and refine our digital banking solution on behalf of our members. That gives us direct control over the touchpoint our members use most.

Our product practice sits at the center of how we grow and how we compete. We define a product not as a static account on a balance sheet, but as the member's complete experience of shopping, applying, and banking with us across digital and physical channels. As a full-service financial institution, we offer more products than any one leader could oversee. So we manage performance and investment through cross-functional Product Strategy Teams (PSTs) that combine expertise in digital product, sales, marketing, underwriting, operations, and technology to drive growth and differentiation. We integrate data and AI into how we work. And we do it with a values-driven, highly engaged leadership team that genuinely likes working together.

Why Join Us

Lead enterprise transformation.
There is meaningful work to do in building an integrated product engine that connects member insight, balance sheet economics, and digital delivery into measurable competitive advantage.

Work with people you respect.
Product strategy sits at the senior management team table here. You will partner with leaders across Technology, Marketing, Operations, and Finance who respect the discipline of product management and use intelligence to make real decisions.

Live your life.
We offer a hybrid work environment with at least three days in the office and up to two days remote, along with generous paid time off and an approach that values balance and flexibility. And with Madison consistently recognized as a great place to live, you’ll have plenty to enjoy outside of work, too.

Who You Are

You are an experienced financial services product leader who has led a significant banking product portfolio, business segment, or product organization. You understand how financial products create value—for the customer and the institution—and have made consequential decisions across product strategy, pricing, portfolio performance, segmentation, and lifecycle management. You are equally comfortable evaluating balance sheet performance, understanding changing consumer needs, leading digital product team, and partnering with technology and operations leaders to translate strategy into compelling experiences.

You are operationally and regulatory grounded. You understand that banking products do not exist in a vacuum; they must thrive inside regulatory boundaries, generate sound margins, and run cleanly across complex technical and operational architectures. You bridge the gap between technical delivery and balance-sheet realities, with the maturity to lead through product leaders rather than managing individual backlogs. You know how to align cross-functional teams around a shared vision, establish operating discipline, and move an organization from reactive feature requests to proactive, product-led growth.

This job is right for you if:

• You have the conviction to make consequential resource trade-offs and hold the strategic line against competing internal requests to protect long-term competitiveness.
• You are energized by managing through product leaders—empowering directors, product owners, and researchers to do their best work.
• You bring deep comfort with the economics of banking and want to lead a data-science-driven product organization.
• You believe the best product strategy starts with deep member discovery and ends with measurable business outcomes.
• You want your work to mean something—fairness in banking, community impact, and member financial well-being.

What differentiates someone great at this job from someone just okay:

Great VPs in this role operate as enterprise integrators. They synthesize evolving member needs, competitive moves, and market dynamics, translating those signals into clear, decisive product choices. They optimize where balance-sheet strategy, technology, operations, and member experience intersect, navigate complex trade-offs, and build the cross-functional trust needed to move strategy into action.

Responsibilities

What the Job Is

Primary Purpose

Build and manage UWCU's product roadmap across core banking and digital channels, translating member needs into growing, profitable, competitive financial services.

At its core, this role owns the intersection of product, price, and place: what products and experiences UWCU offers, how they are packaged and structured to create clear member and organizational value, and how they are delivered seamlessly across digital and physical channels. Product Strategy defines what is built, the target member persona, the unit economics, and the business requirements.

How the role is structured

Owns

P&L accountability for checking as our primary relationship product—the account, fee structure, role of the debit card, and digital banking experience.

Leads

For every other product in our portfolio, this role is the organizing member of the Product Strategy Teams, guiding the work of Product Owners embedded in operational teams and advancing portfolio performance as an equal voice.

Directs: The Director, Digital Product

This role oversees the product lifecycle for the products it owns, from the "plumbing" of core banking (checking, deposits, loans) to the "interface" of digital products, and shapes lifecycle decisions for the rest of the portfolio through regular product strategy rhythms across the credit union.

Key Partners

Marketing

Works in close lockstep with Integrated Marketing to connect product strategy with brand expression—collaborating on positioning, member segments, and value propositions to ensure seamless commercial activation and campaign execution

Technology & Operations

Aligns roadmap feasibility with core and digital tech stack capabilities, our in-house digital engineering team, enterprise project management, back-office teams, branch operations, and contact center workflows.

Finance & ALCO

Collaborates on contribution expectations and designs product structures to meet those targets.

Risk & Compliance

Embeds regulatory and risk requirements into product definitions from the start.

The Five Most Important Responsibilities

Lead Enterprise Product Strategy & Long-Term Roadmaps -

Build, maintain, and execute the enterprise product roadmap across all banking products, services, and digital experiences. Champion product-led growth strategies that position UWCU competitively against regional peers, national money centers, and fintechs. Lead product investment analysis, business case development, and resource prioritization across product lines. Serve as the organizing member of the Product Strategy Teams and an equal voice in advancing the performance of every product in the portfolio, including those this role does not own.

Own Checking & Lead Core Deposit Strategy -

Serve as the enterprise authority on membership, transactional (checking), and deposit products, including the account, fee structure, debit card, and digital banking experience. Product Strategy owns feature packaging, fee structures, member value propositions, and lifecycle roadmaps, working within established ALCO and risk parameters. Optimize deposit portfolios and transactional economics to balance deposit acquisition, relationship deepening, liquidity needs, and margin targets.

Drive Omnichannel Orchestration & Digital Delivery - Lead digital