Product Manager

Overview

Supporting 85,000 skilled retail professionals in more than 110,000 store locations across The World, Natural Insight® is a leading provider of cloud-based workforce management software that aligns retailers, merchandisers, and product companies with mobile teams in stores.  As a young and growing company we’re laser focused on two things: 

1. delighting our customers and
2. hiring talented, passionate and entrepreneurial people to help us grow even faster.

Job Description

The Product Manager is responsible for defining the characteristics and capabilities of the Natural Insight SaaS platform. This includes extending the existing features as well as defining additional new features based on Natural Insight’s business strategy and client/prospect input. Candidates can expect to work with clients, sales prospects, the management team, client services team, and engineering team to gather feature requests for platform enhancements. The ideal candidate will be able to balance these different needs to maximize growth of the business by optimizing the utilization of the company’s engineering teams. In addition, the ideal candidate will have a strong technical background and be able to write detailed functional users stories that will consider customer demands, front-end design, database design, and backend structure.

This role requires a unique blend of business leadership and technical savvy; a big-picture vision, and the drive to make that vision a reality. An important aspect of the Product Manager is spending time in the platform to understand client and industry problems, while finding innovative solutions for the broader market. The Product Manager needs to have a deep business understanding of the market segments that Natural Insight has selected to invest in and translate that understanding to Natural Insight products and services that solve business problems for our clients and prospects. 

The Product Manager will communicate with all areas of the company and work with the VP of Sales and Marketing, the VP of Technology, and the VP of Operations to define product release requirements. Additionally, the Product Manager will work with marketing communications to define the go-to-market strategy, helping them understand the product positioning, key benefits, and target customer. The Product Manager will also serve as the internal and external evangelist for Natural Insight, occasionally working with the sales team and key customers.

The Product Manager will fulfill the role of Product Owner (PO) for some or all of Natural Insight’s SCRUM teams. The PO is responsible for understanding and communicating the customer needs, setting priorities, and maintaining the backlog for each SCRUM team. Finally, the PO is responsible for working with the team on a daily basis to ensure that the delivered software effectively addresses user needs while maintaining technical integrity and quality objectives.

Essential Responsibilities

• Position is based in Sterling, VA

• Manage the entire product life cycle from tactical activities to strategic planning

• Clearly define, prioritize, and maintain the Product Backlog

• Optimize the value of the work engineering performs to the business

• Ensure that the product backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what each SCRUM team will work on next

• Ensure that each SCRUM team clearly understands items in the backlog to the level needed to maximize value for the business

• Analyze and document product and system requirements for new and existing software products, including business requirements, use cases, functional design, rules processing, and user interface layouts

• Interpret the Natural Insight business strategy and specify those market requirements for current and future products by conducting market research supported by on-going visits to customers and non-customers

• Drive cross-team (primarily Engineering, Client Services, and Marketing Communications) product solutions through market requirements, product contract, and positioning.

• Develop and implement a company-wide go-to-market plan for larger product initiatives, working with all departments to execute

• Work closely with the design team to ensure high quality product design back to front.

• Analyze and implement potential partner relationships for the product.

• Some travel required

Required Skills

• 4-year Bachelor’s Degree, preferably a hard sciences or engineering degree. CS or IT degree/coursework a plus.
• 2+ years Software Product Management experience. Startup experience a plus.
• Ability to “bridge the gap” and effectively communicate requirements in both technical and layman’s terms
• Proficient in SCRUM Agile process. Product Owner certification a plus.
• Experience with Agile Issue-Tracking software. Experience with JIRA a plus.
• Experience performing comprehensive market and competitive analyses.
• Experience conducting research surrounding the market’s pain points and growth paths.
• Self-starter and internally motivated to succeed; ability to “hit the ground running” with minimal supervision.
• Strong analytical thinking/problem solving skills.
• Excellent verbal, written communication, and presentation skills. Customer facing experience a plus.
• Familiarity with software architecture best practices
• Familiarity with database technologies and capabilities; strong understanding of SQL
• Familiarity with cutting edge business intelligence and reporting solutions.
• Familiarity with the Microsoft Office Suite.
• Familiarity with Angular JS, HTML/CSS, JQuery, or CF a plus.
• Familiarity with the Retail Industry or SaaS businesses a plus.

Nothing in this job description restricts management’s right to assign or modify duties and responsibilities to this job at any time due to reasonable accommodation or other reasons.