The posting
LOCATION
Open to Remote in EST or CST Locations. Up to 10% travel required.
ABOUT US
Clasp is a venture-backed, mission-driven startup transforming access to education and career pathways. We are revolutionizing the way employers attract and retain critical talent and the way colleges and universities support their students through education financing, all while tackling the student debt crisis. (Yep, we think BIG.) We like to think of ourselves as more than a fintech; we're a catalyst for economic mobility.
A Forbes Fintech 50 company, portfolio company of SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management, the world's largest HR professional society), and one of Business Insider's "43 Start-Ups to Bet Your Career On in 2025," Clasp is driven by our commitment to social impact and innovation.
Our work spans two business lines:
Clasp Talent helps healthcare employers attract and retain critical talent by connecting them with diverse candidates and using student loan repayment as a powerful recruiting and retention tool. We meaningfully connect employers, educational institutions, and learners to drive mutual benefit.
Clasp Finance equips colleges and universities with lending technology to launch and operate their own private student loan programs, enabling schools to step in and support their students directly with financial aid. Recent federal financial aid changes are reshaping how institutions think about supporting their students, and Clasp Finance is poised to meet this moment. This role is focused solely on Clasp Student Finance. You can learn more about this business line here https://www.clasp.com/studentfinance.
WHO WE NEED
We are hiring a Director of Product for the Clasp Student Finance business line. We’ve seen rapid acceleration since recent federal student loan policy changes. We’re landing deals with large, name-brand universities who are seeing that Clasp’s offering is crucial for filling gaps in student loan financing. We have real product market fit, but there is a lot to build when it comes to scale, excellent borrower experience, and the enterprise features that large universities need. We're hiring a Director of Product to make the right calls on our product strategy to make sure we can capitalize on this momentum.
You'll own the product strategy for Clasp Student Finance and work across our executive team, product, engineering, compliance and lending operations to deliver it. We want you to bring your own point of view, back it up with data, and push back when you think we're heading the wrong way. Some days you'll present the year's product plan to our executive team and board. Other days you'll be in refinement with engineering, making the call on a single feature. You'll manage PMs, hire and grow the team, and talk directly with customers.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
- Own the product strategy and roadmap for Clasp Student Finance, co-leading execution alongside the Director of Engineering
- Build a repeatable way to onboard and integrate schools, including how they certify loans and how we connect to their student information systems. We need to launch enterprise university customers without custom builds
- Decide where we make our product bets – prioritize across student application experience, university customer asks, and platform modernization
- Pair deeply with Compliance and bring them in early on every decision. Shipping in a regulated environment requires a strong relationship between Product and Compliance
- Represent Clasp's product vision to school partners, at higher-ed finance conferences and inside the company. This isn't a sales role, but you should be able to explain why a school needs what we're building.
- Learn our lending platform end to end, from application and disclosures through school certification, data and disbursement with our bank and servicing partners. Become the person everyone goes to with product questions about it.
- Become an expert on student loan policy and where Clasp can go to continue to meet the needs of students and universities. You should be deeply passionate about the problem space.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
- 7+ years in product management, including recent hands-on work. You're comfortable working across the spectrum from executive strategy to sprint planning.
- Experience managing direct reports and building a team: you’ve hired, created an org chart, and coached PMs.
- Experience with student loans. You don’t need to have spent your entire career in this space, but we need someone who understands the basic mechanics of financial aid packaging, loan applications, certification and disbursement, and servicing.
- Experience partnering with Compliance to balance risk with the Product vision.
- The ability to learn a complex system quickly. You need to be able to look at diagrams, API docs, read docs, and then grok a complex system quickly.
- Commercial judgment. You connect customer problems to revenue, and you can make a clear tradeoff when schools, students, and internal teams want different things.
- You take a position and defend it. You've disagreed with senior leaders, done the research to back up your view, and changed decisions while keeping their trust.
- You use AI deeply. You can show us how you’ve automated things to have an impact on teammates, customers, and your own workflows.
Nice to haves:
- Experience at a startup or growth-stage company is a plus
- Experience at a fintech that works with bank partners, such as a lending-as-a-service is a plus
WHAT WE GIVE IN RETURN
- Competitive cash and equity compensation
- Health benefits (health, dental, & vision)
- Student loan repayment benefits
- 401k + match
- Flexible PTO policy
- Opportunities to grow and perform in a fast-paced environment alongside a stellar team
Salary
The salary range for this position is competitive and will be commensurate with the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and industry knowledge, ranging between $160,000 to $190,000 annually. In addition to the base salary, we offer an attractive equity component as part of our compensation package, providing an opportunity for eligible employees to share in the success and growth of our company. We are committed to offering competitive compensation and benefits packages to attract and retain top talent.
Work authorization This role is not eligible for immigration sponsorship, now or in the future. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States for any employer.
How we use AI in hiring Clasp uses AI-assisted tools in parts of our hiring process, such as AI notetakers transcribing or summarizing interviews, scheduling, and supporting evaluation in technical assessments. Humans review applications and make every hiring decision. AI tools don't make final decisions about any candidate. You're welcome to use AI to research Clasp and prepare, but during live interviews and assessments we want to hear your own thinking, so please don't use AI tools that generate or feed you responses in real time. If you'd like to be evaluated without AI tools, need an accommodation, or have questions about how we use these tools, email [email protected] and we'll arrange another process where we can.
Equal opportunity Clasp is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We don't discriminate based on race, color, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran or military status, citizenship status (except as required by law), or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered in line with applicable fair chance laws. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the hiring process, email [email protected].
