Director, Product Management at FTD, Inc in Downers Grove, IL

The Director, Product Management is responsible for managing the product lifecycle and working closely with key internal customers (business leadership, Marketing, Merchandising, Sales, IT, and Finance) to drive the long-term strategy, vision, development, and release of products and features for the technology platforms that support the Partner Technology businesses. The Director of Product Management collaborates cross-functionally with business owners, business analysts, and project managers to define and execute the product vision over multiple release cycles. This position is part of the senior technology leadership team and as such the individual is expected to lead by example and create a high-performing environment and help drive the teams to meet their collective business and strategic goals.

At FTD, you can expect a dynamic work environment offering competitive pay and benefits. We seek creative, driven individuals to add to our growing company. Ours is a culture of respect, diversity, partnership, and results.

What you will do:

• Work closely with stakeholders, internal customers, and end-users of the product to understand customer needs and business goals
• Develop and maintain pertinent knowledge regarding customer (and potential customer) needs, habits, and practices, especially for target markets and segments
• Lead virtual, cross-functional "hot teams" to innovate new products/features.
• Manage partners and third-party vendors for new features
• Use business and customer needs to define new products, features, enhancements, or fixes. Represent product/feature specs and requirements throughout each step of the product's creation, including ideation, design, development, and testing. Manage the post-launch process to evolve and optimize features based on on-going customer feedback.
• Collaborate with Business Analysts to develop requirements and turn product vision into concrete product development projects. (Business Analysts are responsible for producing requirements documentation)
• Owning, managing, and executing the Partner Technology Platform roadmap: ensuring active ideas and projects are represented on the roadmap, are rank prioritized by business owners, are making steady progress through pipeline/roadmap/backlog, and are represented on higher-order roadmaps
• Acting as a strategic central hub for the partnership between product, engineering, marketing, and business development, to ensure that deliverables are understood, projects and features prioritized and deadlines met.
• Act as project manager for product development projects that do not have a designated project manager. Manage projects with a focus on timely delivery and adherence to budget and feature-functionality targets.
• Ensuring that cross-company reviews and approvals are obtained for new product/feature projects
• Ensuring that key stakeholders have visibility into the status of work on the product roadmap. Lead meetings and craft communications on active projects, to update on status, lead ideation, give product demos.
• Work in a matrix environment that includes other technology teams at FTD as well as offshore development teams.
• Work with the business development group on RFPs and prospect calls where a discussion of platform technology underlying the Florist division's products is required.
• Estimate the resources and participants needed to achieve project goals.
• Draft and submit budget proposals as needed to advance product development projects.
• Determine and assess the need for additional staff and/or consultants to augment the Product Management team, recommend and gain approval to hire staff.
• Identify and resolve issues and conflicts as needed to advance the Florist product roadmap.
• Coach, mentor, and motivate virtual team members and contractors, and influence them to take positive action and accountability for their assigned work.
• Lead or participate in project post mortems to optimize product development methods for the future.
• Develop best practices and tools for product management.
• Analyze and develop SME in customer satisfaction, consumer usage, product performance, business metrics, and competitor activity and apply that knowledge to innovate and optimize Florist division products to meet/exceed goals
• Perform any other duties as assigned.

What we seek:

• Bachelors Degree preferred.
• MBA or equivalent graduate-level work in business or technology highly desired.
• Management experience in a software development organization preferred, with at least 5 years at the Director level.
• Ability to empathize with customers and understand their explicit and implicit needs
• Passion for applying knowledge, analysis, and creative thinking to develop solutions and features that will advance the product and grow the business
• Experience managing, coaching, and mentoring multiple work teams in the ideation, design, development, integration, optimization, or maintenance of large-scale, B2B platforms along with the internal support systems is required.
• Transactional B2B eCommerce website design and maintenance are highly desired.
• Excellent leadership skills with the ability to set the strategy and objectives that drive optimal results.
• Hands-on project management experience and proven leadership execution on large programs.
• Can conform to shifting priorities, demands, and timelines through analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Flexible during times of change.
• Ability to read communication styles of team members and contractors who come from a broad spectrum of disciplines.
• Persuasive, encouraging, and motivating.
• Ability to defuse tension among project team, should it arise.
• Ability to execute product changes and launches through political sensitivity.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Strong interpersonal skills.
• Must be able to learn, understand, and apply new technologies.