Principal Product Manager

Holds the responsibility for designing, developing, and overseeing activities related to private credit products within the Clearwater system. This oversight encompasses everything from defining the product and planning its development to production and go-to-market strategies. The Product Manager is tasked with crafting the product roadmap necessary to achieve bookings, client NPS, and gross margin targets associated with their component.

To facilitate organic growth, the Product Manager collaborates with internal stakeholders, clients, and prospects to identify new product capability requirements specific to the private credit market. They maintain close collaboration with their development teams to ensure the successful creation and introduction of these new capabilities to the market. A key dimension of this role is the ability to think architecturally — designing scalable, modular product frameworks that can accommodate the evolving complexity of private credit instruments and AI-driven workflows. Furthermore, the Product Manager takes charge of testing and implementing these fresh features with clients and actively promotes future growth to a broader audience of Clearwater clients and prospects operating in private credit strategies.

Responsibilities:

• Team Leadership: Lead a team of 8–15 developers, providing guidance and support while participating in knowledge-sharing and training initiatives focused on private credit workflows, data complexities, and emerging AI capabilities.
• Product Ownership: Own the private credit product suite within the Clearwater system, responsible for the entire lifecycle from ideation to market launch — including support for direct lending, CLOs, mezzanine debt, distressed credit, and other private credit strategies.
• Backlog Management: Prioritize and manage the product backlog, ensuring alignment with business goals, regulatory requirements, and the evolving needs of private credit managers and their investors.
• Requirement Definition: Define clear and comprehensive requirements for feature development across core private credit functions including loan administration, credit facility tracking, PIK interest, covenant monitoring, and waterfall calculations — with an eye toward AI-augmented automation and scalability.
• Product Architecture & Framework Design: Think and operate as a product architect — defining modular, scalable product frameworks that support extensibility across private credit asset classes. Establish design principles, integration patterns, and data models that enable long-term platform coherence and support AI-driven feature development.
• AI Product Strategy: Drive the identification, prioritization, and integration of AI and agentic AI capabilities into the private credit product suite. Define use cases where large language models, machine learning, and intelligent automation can meaningfully reduce operational burden, improve data quality, or surface actionable insights for credit managers and fund administrators.
• Collaboration: Work closely with development teams, data scientists, and AI engineers on the design and building of new features, ensuring they address the unique data, reporting, and operational challenges faced by private credit managers.
• Roadmap Creation: Develop and communicate the product roadmap, setting strategic direction for enhancements that serve credit fund administrators, asset managers, and institutional investors — with a clear arc toward AI-enabled workflows and intelligent automation.
• Stakeholder Communication: Maintain regular communication with stakeholders regarding product updates, roadmap progress, and functionality releases relevant to private credit operations, investor reporting, and AI feature delivery.
• Client Engagement: Actively engage with private credit clients — including BDCs, credit funds, and direct lenders — to understand their operational workflows and reporting needs, translating insights into actionable product enhancements and AI-powered solutions.
• Success Measurement: Measure and analyze the success of new feature releases using data-driven insights, with particular attention to how features improve accuracy and efficiency in private credit accounting, reporting, and AI-assisted workflows.
• Subject Matter Expertise: Act as a subject matter expert in private credit instruments and markets, providing insights and support to the sales team and contributing to competitive product positioning — including articulating the value of AI capabilities to prospective clients.
• Employee Engagement: Participate in large-scale initiatives aimed at promoting employee retention and engagement, contributing to a positive workplace culture.
• Process Improvement: Teach and guide other teams toward effective processes and best practices that enhance productivity across private credit-related workflows, incorporating AI tooling where applicable.

Required Skills:

• Strong analytical skills with the ability to problem-solve effectively in complex, ambiguous private credit scenarios involving bespoke deal structures and non-standard instruments.
• Proven ability to collaborate across various organizational functions, including sales, product management, operations, and technology.
• In-depth knowledge of Private Credit markets, including direct lending, CLOs, unitranche facilities, mezzanine debt, distressed debt, and/or credit fund structures.
• Strong understanding of private credit accounting concepts including accrual-based income recognition, OID/discount amortization, fee income, and credit loss provisioning.
• Demonstrated product architecture thinking — ability to design scalable, modular product frameworks, define integration patterns, and establish data models that support platform-wide coherence and long-term extensibility.
• Proficiency in articulating and applying AI product frameworks, including the ability to identify high-value AI use cases, evaluate build vs. partner decisions for AI capabilities, and define responsible AI guardrails for financial data contexts.
• Hands-on familiarity with Generative AI and agentic AI technologies, including LLM-based workflows, AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and their practical application to private credit data and operational workflows.
• Ability to bridge domain expertise and technical depth — translating complex private credit requirements into well-structured product specifications that engineering and AI/ML teams can execute against.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office and strong computer skills.
• Exceptional attention to detail, organizational skills, and documentation abilities — particularly in managing the complexity of private credit data and AI feature specifications.
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to convey complex credit and AI concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong interpersonal skills, demonstrating the ability to influence and engage stakeholders across credit fund managers, administrators, and institutional allocators.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's or master's degree in Finance, Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Minimum of 15+ years of relevant experience in product management, financial technology, or private credit operations.
• At least 4+ years of professional experience in private credit investment management, fund administration, or credit-focused accounting/operations.
• Demonstrated experience designing or contributing to scalable product architectures in a fintech or enterprise software environment.
• Proven track record of delivering AI or ML-powered product features, ideally within financial services or data-intensive platforms.
• Demonstrated experience in client engagement with private credit managers, BDCs, credit funds, or institutional lenders.
• Proven experience in data visualization and analytics applied to loan portfolios or credit fund reporting.
• Experience writing business requirements for financial technology products serving the private credit or broader alternatives market, including requirements for AI-assisted features and data pipeline integrations.
• Prior experience delivering presentations to credit-focused clients and internal stakeholders, including communicating AI product strategy and roadmap.
• Deep knowledge of private credit instruments including bank loans, direct lending facilities, CLO tranches, mortgage loans, mezzanine structures, and derivatives used in credit strategies.

Apply Now: If you are passionate about driving product innovation at the intersection of private credit and artificial intelligence, have the architectural mindset to build scalable financial platforms, and bring the domain expertise and leadership skills outlined above, we invite you to apply for this exciting opportunity. Join us at Clearwater in shaping the future of intelligent private credit management and reporting.