Product Manager

The Opportunity

Element451 consists of two main product categories: Bolt and the AI CRM. They publicly get most of the attention, but neither one works without what's underneath them: the Core platform. Every agent action, every workflow, every report, every sync to a school's SIS or CRM runs through the same foundation: the data model, the automation and rules engine, and the connective tissue that ties Element451 to the rest of a campus's tech stack. When that foundation is solid, everything built on it moves faster. When it's not, every product line feels it.

Element451 is solving this with data and AI agents that connect the entire student lifecycle — ingesting, syncing, transforming, and activating data across systems that make a campus run. We're looking for a Product Manager to primarily own Core Platform, one of our three functional product areas alongside Bolt (our agent engine) and AI CRM (our engagement tools). Given the breadth of features in AI CRM, this role will also own specific AI CRM features based on team needs and priorities.

What You'll Do:

• Data & Context: Data Sources, Field Management, and the structured data layer that Bolt agents, CRM features, and reporting all read from and write to — plus data quality work like deduplication, audit logging and more

• Automation & Workflow: Workflows/Rules and Journeys— the logic and content that let institutions encode their own processes instead of working around ours

• Insights & Reporting: the data and reporting tools that every use case — marketing, admissions, success, CE & workforce — depends on to show its work

• Integrations Ecosystem: Webhooks, our V3 API, native connectors, and iPaaS partnerships (Zapier and similar tooling) that make Element451 the hub of a campus tech stack, for human integrators and Bolt agents alike

• Marketing & Source Data: The features that help institutions understand where students come from—campaign attribution, source tracking, web analytics, and the tools that connect marketing effort to enrollment outcomes

These aren't supporting features, they're the foundation every other aspect of our products are built on. You will help define the roadmap, unblock engineering, and make it dramatically easier and more trustworthy for customers and their agents to work with their own data inside Element451.

Who You Are:

• Data/Platform Expert: You've worked on CRM, data or platform products and have a genuine curiosity for how things connect, transform, and stay clean at scale. You understand data modeling, ETL/ELT patterns, rules/workflow engines, API design, and webhook reliability.

• Technical Credibility: You can read an API spec, write a SQL query to validate your assumptions, and have an informed opinion on REST vs. webhooks vs. event streaming. You need to understand what's hard and why.

• Systems Thinker: You see how a change to the data model or a new automation primitive ripples across downstream features and to the functional users as well as design for extensibility.

• Customer-Obsessed: You get energy from talking to the admins, enrollment operations teams, registrars, and data teams who live in field management and workflow builders every day.

• Clear Communicator: You write well, present confidently, and can align engineering, design, sales, and executive leadership around a shared vision.

• Product Ownership: You have experience in product management or have been doing the work of a PM without the title, owning outcomes and influencing roadmaps.

Nice-to-Have

• Experience in EdTech or higher education SIS and CRM ecosystems (Slate, Salesforce, Banner, Colleague, etc.)

• Technical or deep functional experience in a higher education/campus setting

• Familiarity with iPaaS platforms (Workato, Boomi, MuleSoft) and workflow automation tools (Zapier, Make.com), or building on top of either

• Background designing rules/workflow engines, data quality or matching (dedup) systems, or reporting/BI products

• Background in vertical SaaS where data fidelity is a competitive differentiator

• Experience designing or managing public APIs and developer-facing products

Why Element451

We're the AI student experience and CRM platform for higher education. Hundreds of colleges and universities use us to recruit, admit, enroll, and retain students. Every one of them depends on the platform underneath Element451 working correctly, every time, without them having to think about it.

The product team is small, high-leverage, and moves fast. You'll work directly with the CPO, VP of Product, engineering leads, and cross-functional partners. No layers, no politics, just good product work on a problem that matters. As a member of a lean team, you may own features or projects outside your primary area. We value PMs who can flex when the work calls for it.