The Director, Product Management leads a product team (typically 5-10) responsible for a specific product group. This role works with a high level of autonomy and discretion. Responsibilities include leading the team’s research and product development efforts as well as implementation and execution of the product group strategy, as well as managing and developing their team members. This role develops a comprehensive product strategy, oversees the roadmap and backlog, and establishes the key performance indicators for a specific product group. In addition, the Director, Product Management develops and presents detailed business cases to senior executives and leads business reviews to ensure that the team prioritizes the right work and delivers the most customer value in the fastest time possible. Although the director manages a team and its work on a set of products, they also may have responsibility for their own products and all strategic and tactical work associated with designing and delivering the products within scope of responsibility.
Essential Job Functions:
People Management
- Continuously builds network of talent inside and outside of FINRA
- Demonstrates and differentiates performance bar across multiple levels and applies to hiring decisions
- Creates mechanisms to help onboard all new talent to organization, mentor others
- Effectively coaches and gives feedback to direct reports to help develop talent and support career development
- Works with cross-functional leaders and experts to establish best practices and identify opportunities to improve the product development and delivery process
- Sets and balances goals across team to optimize performance against organization goals and employee development
- Applies performance standards to team
- Identifies resource needs for team
People Strategy
- Describes strategic importance of vision inside and outside of team
- Sets and articulates expectations around FINRA values and PM behaviors for team, models behavior and exemplifies FINRA values and PM behaviors
- Identify talent needs to enable execution of product strategy
User Insight & Product Definition
- Develops deep understanding of the business and product areas across the product domain, as well as the relevant data that can be used to inform key decisions
- Defines multiple large, cross-functional and/or highly complex products, often spanning multiple product groups, and identifies gaps and user needs by creating vision, strategy, and requirements documents for products
- Utilizes available data or commissions new research to identify user needs
- Performs experiments and organizes primary research to uncover additional user value
- Provides strategic input into the process of defining a group of products across product domains, utilizing expertise on market trends to determine how to best meet user needs
Product Portfolio Management
- Develops, manages, and owns the product roadmap for multiple large, cross functional and/or highly complex products
- Makes trade-off decisions for multiple products or product groups
- Demonstrates expertise across multiple products and understands company-wide assets which facilitates discovery and drives enterprise capabilities
- Builds partnerships with relevant stakeholder teams
- Coordinates with interdependent teams and influences leadership to drive efficiencies
- Builds and leverages solid working relationships with business and product stakeholders, UI/UX, architecture, and technology teams to facilitate product and user success
- Owns and participates in the intake process for their product domain
Product Planning & Prioritization
- Leads the product planning process across multiple large, cross functional and/or highly complex products by overseeing the development of requirements documents (user stories, acceptance criteria, use cases) for products or product releases
- Maintains a prioritized backlog based on defined user value, aligning with product strategy and resource capacity; uses data and analytics to prioritize the product backlog appropriately
- Works closely with UI/UX to set the direction for the design of the user experience for their products
- Determines and monitors release goals, prioritization, implementation, and iteration plans for their products according to user value
- Resolves problems that are escalated during the process
- Collaborates with senior leadership to identify strategy that spans product groups; working with relevant stakeholders to identify barriers or potential long-term consequences of plans across product groups
Product Development
- Facilitates the development process by reviewing demos with the technology team and validating acceptance criteria for multiple large, cross functional and/or highly complex products
- Provides UX/UI approval for their assigned products
- Tracks the development work and drives resolution of escalated issues and bugs for their products
- Identifies issues that will keep their products from delivering on time or at the right level of quality, assesses alternatives to resolve, builds a plan for resolution, and directly resolves or communicates to leadership
Launch
- Leads large and often highly complex product launches by working with relevant stakeholders to develop launch plans
- Identifies, reviews, and resolves issues and blockers in partnership with team members that may delay the launch or impede the success of product(s)
- Coordinates formal UAT where necessary
- Develops product documentation and training materials for users in support of product launches
- Tracks and reports on product launch metrics, utilizing feedback to drive associated actions and product iteration
- Leads post-launch reviews and drives incorporation of feedback in future product releases
Operate
- Works with internal and external teams and users to identify, classify, and resolve product and product group-level user issues
- Identifies new and innovative methods and metrics for tracking product success, works with the technology team to improve reports and monitoring
- Works with stakeholder teams to actively monitor metrics
- Tracks performance trends and gathers user feedback to determine product domain-level gaps, development opportunities, and if necessary, product end-of-life plans
- Represents team in product group-level discussions with stakeholders
- Attends business reviews, providing critical input and expert insights to inform the business cases, business strategy, and development of new products
- Builds and maintains relationships with key industry thought leaders to improve vision and improve product success
Team Development & Continuous Improvement
- Provides coaching and guidance to more junior-level product management team members
- Works with cross-functional leaders and experts to establish best practices and identify opportunities to improve the product development and delivery process
- Follow, understand, and apply relevant industry trends, research, and best practices in technology and product management
- Builds and maintains relationships with key industry thought leaders to improve vision and improve product success
- Demonstration of FINRA’s values.
- Collaboration, both in-person and virtually, in furtherance of FINRA’s mission of investor protection and market integrity.
Other Responsibilities:
Additional responsibilities as assigned.
Education/Experience Requirements:
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Marketing, Engineering, Communications, or related field (or equivalent work experience in a related field)
10 years of experience in one or more of the following: product management, project management, business analysis, program management, or product marketing
7 years of experience in product and/or experience management
5 years of leadership experience with direct report responsibility
Strong writing ability
Strong business acumen
Experience with Agile software development
Experience working cross-functionally in a large organization
Experience working closely with senior leadership
Experience translating data into quantifiable actions/deliverables
Preferred Qualifications
Master’s Degree in Business Administration or similar advanced degree
CSPO Certification
Experience in the Financial Services industry
Strong financial acumen
Experience collaborating closely with senior leadership
Experience providing guidance and direction to cross-functional resources
Working Conditions:
Hybrid work environment, with defined in-person presence requirements.
Extended hours may be required.
For work that is performed in CO, FL, TX, IL, PA, MA, MD, VA, Washington, DC, NY and NJ, please refer to the chart below for the salary range for the corresponding location. FINRA complies with all state and local pay transparency laws and regulations requiring the disclosure of salary