Head of Product (UpNext)

Role Mission

As Product Manager at UpNext, you'll own product strategy and execution for the UpNext platform: the transfer portal intelligence tool used by college coaches nationwide to track transfer portal activity, build recruit lists, and evaluate roster needs. You'll partner with UpNext leadership to set and prioritize the roadmap, and work day-to-day with ScopeLabs, UpNext's product development partner, to turn priorities into shipped features. This is a foundational product hire, you'll help define how product decisions get made as UpNext scales.

Core Responsibilities

Product Development

• Document and organize feedback and feature requests from coaches, internal stakeholders, and platform usage data, prioritizing initiatives based on product intuition, user insights, and business priorities

• Product interviews of customers across the full product lifecycle, including coaches, agencies, and athletes

• Own the UpNext feature roadmap end-to-end: prioritization, sequencing, and communicating status to leadership

• Write clear, detailed product specs (requirements, user journeys, technical specs) in partnership with ScopeLabs

• Partner with ScopeLabs' engineering team to shepherd features from spec through launch across core platform surfaces: Search, Smart Lists, Insights, Team Pages, Athlete Profiles, and the Activity Feed

• Conduct QA testing on new releases to ensure high-quality deliverables before they reach coaches

• Identify product improvement opportunities through customer calls, platform usage, and analytics tooling

• Stay close to UpNext's core data pipeline (NCAA transfer portal data, JUCO data, AI-resolved transfer destinations, and emerging high school data sources) and find new data providers to enhance the data coverage and data integrity.

Stakeholder & Team Management

• Communicate roadmap status and delivery timelines to UpNext leadership

• Gather and triage feedback from coaches and internal stakeholders

• Represent the voice of the customer (coaches and recruiting staff) in product decisions

Process & Operations

• Own UpNext's weekly release cycle process, including sprint planning and ticket triage

• Manage bug triage and prioritization across the product roadmap

• Suggest and drive process improvements as the product organization matures

• Help evolve UpNext's product development processes as the team grows beyond its initial ScopeLabs-supported build phase

Growth Path - First 3 Months

Month 1: Foundation

• Shadow existing product meetings, QA cycles, and release processes

• Develop a deep understanding of the UpNext platform: Search, Smart Lists, Insights, Team Pages, Athlete Profiles, and Activity Feed

• Learn the recruiting and transfer portal domain: NCAA transfer rules, portal data sources, and in-flight JUCO and high school data initiatives

• Learn UpNext's spec-writing approach and begin drafting specs with mentorship from ScopeLabs

Month 2: Growing Ownership

• Begin presenting in the weekly product/leadership meeting

• Start owning coach and stakeholder communications

• Take point on spec writing for new initiatives

• Begin coordinating directly with ScopeLabs' engineering team on sprint planning and delivery

• Start managing parts of the release and QA process

Month 3: Independence

• Own the full feature roadmap end-to-end

• Own spec creation end-to-end

• Own all stakeholder and coach communications

• Manage feature delivery independently in partnership with ScopeLabs

• Contribute to high-level product strategy discussions for UpNext's next phase of growth

Additional Opportunities

• Shape UpNext's product development processes as the team scales beyond its initial build phase

• Deepen expertise in the college sports recruiting and transfer portal space

• Contribute to strategic conversations about UpNext's product direction and data strategy

This is just a starter list… many more TBD!