Technical Product Manager eduXchange

Would you like to contribute to the future of flexible education in the Netherlands? As a Technical Product Manager at eduXchange, you’ll work on innovative digital solutions that help students easily find educational programs, enroll, and automatically exchange academic records. You’ll combine technical expertise with a product-oriented mindset and collaborate with educational institutions and partners to develop solutions that make a social impact.

Where you will work

SURF is the ICT cooperative for Dutch educational and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation challenges to enhance the quality of education and research. As a Technical Product Manager at eduXchange, you’ll make a significant contribution to this by helping to build digital solutions that enable flexible and accessible education.

Working at SURF means working for a unique and open organization. This is evident in everything: the structure of the organization, the setup of the project teams, the culture in our offices, and the atmosphere among colleagues. SURF offers excellent terms of employment and a flexible approach to work/life balance. Employees enjoy working independently. In addition, everyone is given the space and freedom to use and develop their talents as effectively and broadly as possible.

The team you will join

You will be working on the eduXchange product team, which is part of the multidisciplinary Flexible Education team within the Accessible and Open Education & Research unit. Together, we develop and manage digital services that support institutions in delivering flexible and adaptable education.

EduXchange plays a key role in the digital infrastructure for Application, Enrollment, and Registration within the National Growth Fund program Npuls. The platform makes it easier for students to find course offerings from various institutions, enroll in minors or electives, and exchange academic records.

Within the product team, you’ll collaborate with a product manager, another technical product manager, a full-time developer, a flexible development team, and a UX designer. We work together openly and pragmatically, share knowledge, and actively seek the best solutions to complex challenges. There’s also plenty of room to contribute ideas on the further development of EduXchange and its integration with related services.

What you will do

As a Technical Product Manager for eduXchange, you are responsible for the technical development and management of the eduXchange platform. In addition, you will contribute to the architecture and technical integration with related digital systems, such as SURFeduhub, OEAPI, and the “Apply, Enroll, and Register” program. In this way, you will ensure that eduXchange is a stable, secure, and future-proof platform that supports educational institutions and optimally serves students.

You translate the functional needs of institutions and strategic developments into concrete technical solutions. In doing so, you work closely with developers, architects, product managers, educational institutions, and external partners. You’ll be closely involved in the implementation and support of eduXchange at new and existing member institutions and will help reconcile various interests. As a key technical point of contact, you’ll build support for technical decisions and contribute ideas on the further development of eduXchange and technical coherence within the broader landscape of digital educational services.

Other responsibilities include:

• Designing and implementing technical solutions within eduXchange and related services, such as SURFeduhub, OEAPI, and the “Login, Enrollment, and Registration” program;
• Contributing to the technical architecture and the coherence between various digital education services;
• Managing and improving deployments on SURF’s Kubernetes platform and contributing to the further automation of development, testing, and release processes via CI/CD;
• Collaborating with educational institutions, development teams, vendors, and technical partners to translate needs into scalable and future-proof solutions;
• Mentoring developers, monitoring technical quality, and advising on architecture, security, and privacy issues;
• Improving and automating processes related to management, support, and the onboarding of new educational institutions;
• Developing Proofs of Concept, exploring new technologies and standards, and contributing to secure solutions based on privacy-by-design and security-by-design principles.

Your skills and experience

You are a technically skilled professional who enjoys working on digital solutions that have a social impact. You combine a broad technical perspective with an interest in the education sector, and you thrive on complex challenges that bring together technology, user needs, and future-proofing. You know how to connect different stakeholders, can clearly justify technical decisions, and enjoy collaborating on solutions used by many educational institutions.

In addition, you have:

• A university-level education and at least five years of relevant experience in a role as a technical product manager, solution architect, or similar;
• Demonstrable experience with digital services in higher education or a strong affinity with the educational context;
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native technologies and container platforms, including Kubernetes;
• Experience with modern software architectures, such as REST APIs, microservices, and event-driven architectures;
• Demonstrable experience with privacy-by-design and security-by-design principles;
• Experience with CI/CD processes and, preferably, knowledge of technologies such as Next.js and/or Java;
• Excellent communication skills in Dutch and English and experience collaborating with developers, educational institutions, vendors, and other stakeholders.

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.