Product Manager

Description • VISTA is a mission critical application that supports 150+ markets across European and IMG region. • Dealers use VISTA application to Create/Manage/Cancel and Track their orders • National sales company and regional admins to manage orders for the future • Retail customer ordering supported via E-comm • Dealers has the ability to search Ford owned, Dealer owned stocks using various services on this function In this position you will... • Design and deliver industry-leading products and services to maximize value for customers. • Provide techo-functional product leadership to the team Responsibilities - Strategic Product & Technical Vision: Own the end-to-end product lifecycle—from envisioning and framing to launch—while maintaining a constant balance between business viability, user desirability, and technical feasibility. - VISTA application suite is undergoing a massive technology modernization in alignment with the Global order fulfilment portfolio functions. Need to be able to drive that vison. - Backlog Engineering & Scoping: Translate high-level business visions into actionable, prioritized backlogs. Lead quarterly scoping sessions to break down complex roadmaps into manageable features, user stories, and technical acceptance criteria. - Software Engineering Excellence: Champion and lead "Software Engineering Excellence" practices, including the implementation of robust CI/CD processes, development methodologies, and the selection of modern technology stacks and tools. - Technical knowhow, - Exposure on Oracle and PLSQL, Java Modernization experience and Data base modernization - User-Centric Validation: Drive product discovery through experiments, user interviews, and data insights, ensuring that technical development is always rooted in validated user needs and iterative feedback. - Architectural & Portfolio Alignment: Collaborate with architects and other Product Line managers to reduce system complexity, enhance interoperability between services, and make key design decisions that impact the broader portfolio. - Overall Release Management: Vista is a multi PDO team that delivers the solution together. In this role, you will lead the release management and maintain the release cadence in accordance with the S-ox compliance. - Cross-Functional Delivery Leadership: Work hands-on with cross-functional teams (Design, Engineering, and Business) to plan and deliver software that meets both functional requirements and platform foundation capabilities. - Stakeholder Translation & Management: Serve as the primary liaison for Business Partners, helping them navigate iterative development cycles and GTM (Go-To-Market) strategies while clearly communicating technical strategy and risks. - Risk Mitigation & Impediment Removal: Actively identify, communicate, and mitigate technical and functional risks. Proactively remove blockers to ensure the team maintains high velocity and product delivery remains on track. - Product & Technical Health Assessment: Continuously monitor the "overall health" of the product—including code quality, system performance, and user adoption—to prompt key decisions for continuous improvement. - Mentorship & Process Innovation: Foster a culture of continuous learning by mentoring team members in Agile/XP methods and product management techniques, while constantly iterating on processes to improve team efficiency. Qualifications Qualifications and Skills - 10+ years of overall expereince - 5+ years of product management expertise with a solid foundation in agile software development. 5+ years of domain knowledge in Supply Chain, Order Management or Dealer Experience. - Certification relevant to product management and / or software engineering or commitment to obtain within 6 months. - Leadership experience in creating a psychologically safe team environment and blameless retros. - Proven ability to define product vision, strategy, and roadmap, and experience in creating and managing product backlogs. - Expertise leading large scale transformations and systems thinking. - Expertise in leading cross-functional teams and managing stakeholder expectations. - Demonstrated DevSecOps mindset, with full ownership of development, security, and operational support aspects of a product. - Excellent oral and written communication skills. - Experience in monitoring activities and tools such as Dynatrace or Google Cloud Monitoring for operational support. - Ability to manage complex integrations and dependencies across various products, product lines, and product groups. - Proven leadership skills in people management, team building, and coaching, with the ability to motivate and inspire teams to identify innovative solutions. - Strong understanding of Load/Performance testing and A/B testing methodologies. - Experience in service-oriented architecture and the development of APIs/Microservices. - Bachelor degree or masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Good to have: - Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field. - Familiarity with serverless computing and event-driven architecture. - Experience with Software Engineering tools and practices such as - Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform - Google Cloud Platform and Tekton CI/CD deployment pipeline automation. - Java programming and experience with databases such as Postgres SQL and MS SQL/Oracle. - Dynatrace or Google Cloud Monitoring for operational support. - Understanding of network security principles and practices. - Familiarity with emerging technologies such as Large Language Models - Experience in the automotive industry or related technology fields.