Responsibilities

• Lead market research and direct customer discovery for target SLED segments - including K-12, higher education, state agencies, and local government - through personal, hands-on engagement with buyers.
• Develop and pressure-test ICPs, buyer personas, demand signals, and buying triggers in real market conditions. In higher education specifically, the three primary commercial pillars are student attrition, retention, and engagement - the Director is expected to understand which of these a given product addresses and whether buyers will actually pay for and use it, not just express interest.
• Run pricing and packaging experiments and validate revenue model assumptions through live customer engagements, not internal modeling alone.
• Assess market size, competitive landscape, procurement dynamics, and buyer readiness for each product in the portfolio.
• Identify commercial friction early - before scale investment occurs - and surface those findings to product and leadership with clear, evidence-based go/pivot/kill recommendations.
• Develop go-to-market recommendations, including target segments, channel strategy, pricing considerations, and sequencing of market entry.
• Evaluate whether and how Nelnet Diversified Services products can be positioned within existing SLED procurement vehicles (e.g., Sourcewell, NASPO ValuePoint, state contracts).
• Build and manage a pipeline of early adopters through direct outreach and customer conversations - determining who will buy, why they will buy, and how they will buy.
• Own early sales motions personally: outreach, product demos, willingness-to-pay discussions, offer testing, and design-partner negotiations.
• Secure design partners, pilot participants, letters of intent, and early paid engagements - ensuring pilots involve real users and real commitment, not theoretical interest.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Public Administration, Marketing, or a related field.
• Advanced degree (MBA or equivalent) or demonstrated equivalent through career experience.
• 7+ years of experience in go-to-market strategy, market development, or business development roles, with direct personal ownership of customer-facing commercial activities - not oversight of others doing them.
• Demonstrated experience selling or taking products to market in the SLED sector (State, Local, and/or Education).
• Established working history and active network within the Google Public Sector ecosystem, including direct experience engaging with Google’s public sector sales, partner, or field teams.
• Proven ability to sell and validate unfinished or early-stage products - comfortable owning conversations with skeptical buyers and translating field learnings into actionable commercial strategy.
• Experience running pricing and demand experiments in live market conditions; comfort operating with incomplete information and ambiguity.
• Experience working cross-functionally with product, sales, and executive stakeholders in a matrixed environment.

Preferred

• Preferred: - Experience with public sector procurement mechanisms, including cooperative purchasing vehicles, RFP processes, and sole-source justifications. - Background in EdTech, government technology, financial services, or adjacent B2B markets serving public institutions. - Experience with early-stage or emerging product commercialization in an established enterprise, including founder-style or fractional GTM roles where ambiguity and rapid learning are the norm. - Familiarity with grant management, accreditation, or financial aid technology markets. - Experience with Google Cloud Marketplace, Carahsoft, and cooperative purchasing vehicles (Internet2, E+I, Sourcewell) as distribution channels - including private listings, marketplace listing management, and working with Carahsoft to activate public sector buyer access.

Benefits

• Our benefits package includes medical, dental, vision, HSA and FSA, generous earned time off, 401K/student loan repayment, life insurance & AD&D insurance, employee assistance program, employee stock purchase program, tuition reimbursement, performance-based incentive pay, short- and long-term disability, and a robust wellness program. Click here to learn more about our benefits: Benefits & Perks - Nelnet Inc .