IT Product Manager

This role owns and leads the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for user-facing applications, with a strong emphasis on user experience (UX) design, functionality, cross product integrations, and the development of intuitive and engaging front-end solutions. This Product Manager is the voice of the end user, ensuring that product development aligns with user needs and delivers exceptional functionality and usability. The role also ensures agency and contracted team members understand and complete assigned work.

Product Strategy & Vision:

• Own and manage the Global Safety and Ergonomics Tool (GSET) Product map.

• Own and manage the Global Medical Employee Data (GMED) Product map.

• Define and communicate the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for front-end applications, ensuring alignment with broader organizational digital strategies.

• Conduct comprehensive research, analysis, and industry trend analysis to identify opportunities and inform product decisions.

• Develop business cases for new features, sagas, or epics, focusing on user desirability and business viability.

User Experience (UX) Leadership:

• Sign off and approve UX design from supplier's Designer.

• Own the end-to-end user experience of the product, managing the translation of business goals into user-centric designs.

• Lead and support a dedicated Product Designer, providing design leadership, mentorship, and first-level review of visual (UI) and interactive (UX) designs (information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, user flows).

• Discover and frame user problems through stakeholder interviews, user interviews, concept testing, and usability testing.

• Ideate, test, and iterate solutions through brainstorming and lean experiments, gathering direct user feedback on proposed designs and features.

Privacy & Compliance:

• Leads and owns the Ford Privacy process for the health and safety PDO.

• Oversee Ford Privacy set up, review and approval for global and regional privacy requirements.

• Ensure DRIs are identified for regional and global reviewers/approvers.

Technical Collaboration:

• Collaborate closely with software engineers/developers/architects and other integrated services/sources to discuss development feasibility and review visual/interaction designs.

• Maintain an understanding of the technical architecture of the user interface and front-end applications.

Product Development & Delivery (Front End):

• CO-Define the Release Plan & Process.

• Coordination, implementation, and management of Gemba sessions.

• Ensure user stories and tasks are identified and provided to the Project Managers for Jira assignment.

• Lead and support requirements gathering and refinement by working directly with end users, other ET application teams, and internal business partner teams. 

• Translate requirements into clear, concise, and testable sagas, epics, and user stories/tasks (e.g., Gherkin format), owning their definition and acceptance criteria.

• Signing off/approving on supplier written sagas, epics, user stories/tasks and test cases.

• Champion Agile PDO methodology, actively participating in and contributing to agile ceremonies (e.g., sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives).

• Prioritize deliverables and maintain a healthy product backlog in Jira, focusing on user-facing features and improvements.

• Own the creation and management of agile ceremony meetings for sprint prioritization, release management, and release communications.

• Collaborate with business partners, engineering and design teams to define MVPs and ensure technical feasibility and user desirability.

• Lead and manage User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and ensure product readiness for release from a user perspective.

• Participate in QA Testing that is lead by the Testing Engineer

Stakeholder Management & Communication:

• Foster cross-functional collaboration with engineering, integration partners, design, and business stakeholders, ensuring clear communication and alignment on front-end product development.

• Communicate product strategy, roadmap, and updates to stakeholders, managing expectations.

• Sign off/approval of assigned project status meetings, SAR’s, recaps/summaries, follow ups, and next steps; support governance and other ad hoc meetings;

Product Documentation & Measurement:

• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for user-facing features (e.g., saga/epic documentation/Business Requirement Documents/Solution Design Documents, Business Rules).

• Define, track, and report on OKRs/KPIs related to user engagement, usability, and front-end performance.

• Engage with the business owners ensuring understanding of application and business OKRs/KPIs

• Create and own user feedback mechanism(s)

• Analyze user feedback and data to inform product decisions and identify areas for improvement.

Minimum / Required Qualifications:

• Education: 

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Information Systems, Business Administration, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).

• Experience: 

  • 5+ years of product management experience managing digital, user-facing applications, front-end software solutions, or web/mobile platforms.

  • Demonstrated experience owning the product lifecycle end-to-end (product vision, discovery, road mapping, backlog prioritization, user acceptance testing, and release management).

• User Experience (UX) & Design Partnership: 

  • Understanding of UX/UI principles, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, user flows, and usability testing.

  • Experience partnering closely with Product Designers and guiding/approving visual and interaction designs.

• Agile & Delivery Methodologies: 

  • Hands-on experience working in an Agile / Product Driven Organization (PDO) environment.

  • Proficiency in writing clear user stories, epics, sagas, and acceptance criteria (e.g., Gherkin format / BDD).

  • Strong working knowledge of Jira or similar agile project and backlog management tools.

• Data Privacy & Compliance Awareness: 

  • Experience handling sensitive data, regulatory compliance, or privacy frameworks for global applications.

• Stakeholder & Vendor Management: 

  • Proven track record of managing agency/supplier teams, cross-functional engineering teams, and enterprise business stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Domain Knowledge: 

  • Background or familiarity with enterprise Occupational Health & Safety, or Medical/Employee Data systems 

• Technical Acumen: 

  • Understanding of modern front-end architectures, APIs, and cross-product integration patterns to effectively communicate technical feasibility with software architects and engineers.

• Discovery & Lean Methodologies: 

  • Experience conducting user research, stakeholder interviews, lean experiments, and on-site observational studies (e.g., Gemba walks / sessions).

• Metrics & Analytics: 

  • Experience defining, tracking, and optimizing Product KPIs and Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) related to user adoption, engagement, usability, performance and other telemetries.

Key Skills & Competencies:

• End-User Advocacy: Passion for understanding user pain points and transforming them into intuitive, frictionless digital experiences.

• Strategic Thinking & Problem Framing: Ability to align tactical feature delivery with overarching organizational digital strategies and business viability.

• Cross-Functional Leadership: Excellent leadership, negotiation, and mentorship abilities to guide agency/supplier team, coordinate with QA/engineering, and align business owners.

• Communication & Executive Presence: Strong written and verbal communication skills to deliver status reports, SARs, executive summaries, and clear product documentation.

You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've outlined, but if you think you can bring value to Ford Motor Company, we encourage you to apply!

As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. You can choose what your Ford future will look like: will your story span the globe, or keep you close to home? Will your career be a deep dive into what you love, or a series of new teams and new skills? Will you be a leader, a changemaker, a technical expert, a culture builder…or all of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:

• Immediate medical, dental, and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care, parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members, and management leases
• Tuition assistance
• Established and active employee resource groups
• Paid time off for individual and team community service
• A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

For a detailed look at our benefits, click here: Benefit Summary 

This position is a salary grade 8. 

This position is a salary grade 8 and ranges from $115,000-$192,900.

Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's skills and experience, and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope, responsibility and competitive market value.

*Visa Sponsorship is not provided for this role*

Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to a culturally diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status. In the United States, If you need a reasonable accommodation for the online application process due to a disability, please call 1-888-336-0660.
 

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