Technical Product Manager - IT

• Product Strategy & Vision:

• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand business needs and translate them into a clear technical product vision and strategy, particularly for data-driven initiatives.
• Define product scope, objectives, and key results (OKRs) for technical initiatives, focusing on data flow, integration, and processing.

• Technical Design & Architecture Collaboration:

• Work closely with engineering leadership and architects on technical design and architectural decisions, ensuring solutions are robust, scalable, and align with overall platform strategy on GCP.
• Champion data architecture principles, ensuring solutions support robust data pipelines, data modeling, data quality, and integration patterns.
• Contribute to discussions on technology choices, system integration patterns, and data modeling within a cloud-native context.

• Product Development & Execution:

• Own and manage the technical product backlog, prioritizing features, capabilities, and user stories based on business value, technical feasibility, and operational impact, with an eye towards data integrity and flow.
• Translate complex technical requirements into detailed, actionable specifications for engineering teams, including data transformation and validation rules.
• Act as the primary product owner within agile development cycles (e.g., sprint planning, stand-ups, reviews, retrospectives).
• Facilitate effective communication and collaboration between engineering, QA, and other cross-functional teams.

• Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) Management:

• Define, document, and track critical Non-Functional Requirements, including performance, scalability, reliability, security, observability, and maintainability, with a strong emphasis on data quality and integrity.
• Work with engineering to ensure solutions meet established NFRs throughout the development process, especially within a cloud environment.

• Deployment & Release Management:

• Oversee the deployment and release processes for technical products on GCP, ensuring operational readiness and smooth transitions to production environments.
• Collaborate with DevOps and infrastructure teams on automation, monitoring, and infrastructure-as-code requirements specific to cloud deployments.

• Operational Support & Improvement:

• Act as a key liaison for post-deployment support, contributing to incident resolution, root cause analysis, and problem management for technical issues, particularly those related to data processing or cloud infrastructure.
• Gather feedback from operational teams and internal stakeholders to identify pain points and inform continuous product improvements.
• Drive efforts for technical debt reduction and system optimization based on operational insights from cloud monitoring.

• Stakeholder Communication:

• Communicate technical product updates, roadmaps, and trade-offs effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences, explaining complex data flows and cloud architecture in an accessible manner.
• Manage expectations and foster strong relationships with all stakeholders.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15+ years of experience in software development, engineering, or a highly technical role, with at least 4 years in a Technical Product Management capacity.
• Demonstrated understanding of the full software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and development to deployment and operations.
• Strong technical acumen with the ability to understand complex system architectures, APIs, data flows, and integration patterns.
• Experience working in Agile development environments (Scrum, Kanban).
• Proven ability to translate business needs into technical requirements and user stories.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and presentation skills, with the ability to influence and persuade diverse audiences.
• Problem-solving mindset with a strong attention to detail.

• Master's degree in a relevant technical field.
• Extensive experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services for compute, storage, messaging, and data solutions (e.g., Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, and various data processing services).
• Strong understanding and experience with data-centric architectures, including data ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption patterns, with an emphasis on data quality and integrity.
• Familiarity with distributed systems, microservices architectures, and event-driven patterns in a cloud environment.
• Experience with building and managing data pipelines, data integration, or enterprise system integration projects.
• Knowledge of monitoring, logging, and alerting best practices for production systems on GCP.

Ford