Summary
Pleora is seeking a strategic, market-focused product leader to lead its Product Management organization and product portfolio.
Reporting to the Vice President of Product Marketing, this role is accountable for the overall effectiveness of Product Management, including customer discovery, market validation, portfolio strategy, roadmap development, technology partnership evaluation, commercialization, and product investment prioritization.
The Manager, Product Management leads Pleora's Product Management team and ensures product investments are aligned with customer needs, market opportunities, competitive differentiation, and business objectives. This role serves as the primary bridge between external customers and markets and internal Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and Executive Leadership, translating market insight into product strategy, portfolio decisions, and growth initiatives.
What You Do
Product Management Leadership
- Lead and develop the Product Management organization, establishing priorities, processes, best practices, and operating rhythms.
- Directly manage Product Managers and provide coaching in customer discovery, product validation, business case development, roadmap planning, and commercialization.
- Establish accountability for product performance, portfolio outcomes, customer adoption, and commercial success.
- Build a customer-focused Product Management culture that balances market opportunity, customer value, technical feasibility, and business outcomes.
Product Strategy & Portfolio Management
- Own portfolio strategy, product roadmap planning, and lifecycle management, including investment recommendations, roadmap prioritization, product introductions, and end-of-life decisions.
- Lead portfolio planning and rationalization activities, including recommendations on where Pleora should invest, expand, partner, maintain, or exit.
- Connect portfolio strategy, roadmap priorities, and commercialization activities to measurable business outcomes.
- Ensure product investments are grounded in customer discovery, validated market needs, competitive differentiation, and commercial viability.
- Define portfolio strategies that balance innovation, customer demand, technical feasibility, resource constraints, and return on investment.
- Monitor portfolio performance through customer adoption, design wins, pipeline contribution, revenue growth, and strategic market impact.
Customer Discovery & Market Validation
- Establish and lead repeatable customer discovery and product validation processes across the organization.
- Build and maintain relationships with customers, technology partners, industry experts, and key stakeholders.
- Develop and manage Voice of Customer programs that identify unmet market needs and validate product-market fit.
- Ensure customer and market requirements are effectively represented in portfolio planning and investment decisions.
- Translate customer insights into strategic product recommendations, business cases, and roadmap priorities.
Technology Partnerships & Ecosystem Development
- Identify, evaluate, and develop technology partnerships that strengthen Pleora's portfolio and competitive position.
- Assess build-versus-buy-versus-partner opportunities to accelerate time-to-market and expand market reach.
- Collaborate with partners to identify joint solution opportunities, ecosystem initiatives, and market expansion strategies.
- Develop business cases and recommendations for strategic partnerships, adjacent market opportunities, and future investments.
Commercialization & Go-to-Market
- Own product value propositions, market requirements, positioning strategy, and commercialization planning, while partnering with Marketing and Sales to execute successful go-to-market initiatives.
- Develop commercialization plans that align product investments with target markets, customer needs, and growth objectives.
- Partner with Marketing and Sales to execute product launches, sales enablement, and commercialization programs that drive market adoption and business growth.
Data-Driven Decision Making & AI Enablement
- Champion the practical use of AI-enabled tools and data-driven processes to improve market research, customer insight generation, competitive analysis, business case development, portfolio planning, and decision-making effectiveness.
- Foster an environment where Product Managers leverage modern tools and methodologies to improve productivity, quality of analysis, and speed of execution.
- Establish metrics and performance indicators that support evidence-based product and portfolio decisions.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Drive alignment across Product Management, Engineering, Solution Architecture, Application Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and Executive Leadership.
- Lead investment and prioritization discussions that balance customer needs, business objectives, technical realities, and resource constraints.
- Facilitate informed decision-making across stakeholders to ensure alignment on portfolio strategy, investment priorities, and roadmap direction.
- Build strong working relationships across the organization to accelerate execution and business results.
Industry Leadership
- Represent Pleora at industry conferences, trade shows, customer meetings, and partner engagements.
- Contribute to thought leadership through presentations, articles, webinars, and industry participation.
- Strengthen Pleora's visibility, influence, and strategic relationships within key markets and technology ecosystems.
- Maintain awareness of emerging technologies, market trends, competitive activity, and evolving customer requirements.
What You Need
Experience
- 8+ years of experience in Product Management, Product Strategy, Product Marketing, or a related technology leadership role.
- 3+ years of people leadership experience, including coaching, developing, and managing Product Managers or comparable professionals.
- Demonstrated success defining product strategy, portfolio roadmaps, and investment priorities for B2B technology products.
- Proven experience conducting customer discovery, market validation, and Voice of Customer initiatives.
- Experience developing business cases, evaluating market opportunities, and guiding product investment decisions.
- Demonstrated experience owning product positioning, value propositions, messaging, commercialization strategies, and launch planning.
- Proven ability to bring technology products to market through commercialization, go-to-market execution, product launches, and sales enablement.
- Experience working closely with Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Executive Leadership in a cross-functional environment.
- Experience in machine vision, industrial automation, embedded systems, defence, medical imaging, networking, semiconductor, or related technology markets is a strong asset.
Skills & Competencies
- Strong strategic thinking and portfolio management capabilities.
- Deep understanding of Product Management disciplines, including customer discovery, market validation, roadmap planning, portfolio management, and lifecycle management.
- Ability to translate customer needs, market insights, and technical capabilities into compelling product strategies and business outcomes.
- Strong commercial acumen, including pricing, positioning, value proposition development, commercialization planning, and go-to-market execution.
- Excellent analytical and decision-making skills, with the ability to balance customer value, market opportunity, technical feasibility, and business return.
- Strong communication, presentation, stakeholder management, and influencing skills.
- Ability to align and lead cross-functional teams without direct authority.
- Strong business case development, financial analysis, and investment prioritization capabilities.
- Experience leveraging AI-enabled tools and data-driven processes to improve decision-making, analysis, and productivity.
Education
- Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Business, Marketing, or a related discipline.
- MBA or equivalent business and leadership experience is considered an asset.
What Does Success Look Like in 12 Months?
A successful candidate will:
- Build a high-performing Product Management organization with clear accountability, ownership, and execution discipline.
- Establish a repeatable customer discovery and product validation framework that is consistently applied across the portfolio.
- Deliver a prioritized, customer-validated roadmap aligned with Pleora's strategic growth objectives.
- Improve portfolio focus through clear investment, expansion, partnership, maintenance, and end-of-life recommendations.
- Strengthen relationships with customers, technology partners, and industry stakeholders, resulting in improved market insight and product relevance.
- Improve the quality and speed of business case development, portfolio decisions, and roadmap prioritization through data-driven processes and effective use of AI-enabled tools.
- Deliver measurable improvements in customer adoption, design wins, pipeline contribution, commercialization effectiveness, and business growth.
- Establish Product Management as a trusted strategic partner to Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Executive Leadership.
Leadership Characteristics
Strategic & Market Focused
- Connect customer needs, market opportunities, and business objectives to product investment decisions.
- Anticipate market shifts, technology trends, and emerging growth opportunities.
- Balance short-term execution priorities with long-term portfolio strategy.
Business-Oriented Decision Maker
- Evaluate opportunities using customer value, market attractiveness, technical feasibility, competitive differentiation, and commercial return.
- Make recommendations based on customer insight, data, evidence, and business impact.
- Balance innovation, profitability, and execution capacity when making investment decisions.
Customer-Centric Product Leader
- Demonstrate a deep commitment to understanding customer problems before proposing solutions.
- Promote discovery, validation, and continuous market learning as core Product Management disciplines.
- Ensure products are built around real customer needs and measurable business value.
Collaborative Influencer
- Build alignment across Product Management, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Executive Leadership.
- Influence decisions and unite stakeholders around strategic priorities.
- Foster collaboration, transparency, accountability, and trust across teams.
Coach & Team Builder
- Develop Product Managers into stronger strategic, market-driven, and customer-focused leaders.
- Promote accountability, ownership, continuous learning, and professional growth.
- Build a culture of curiosity, market awareness, customer focus, and business-oriented thinking.
Technology-to-Market Leader
- Translate complex technologies into compelling customer value and business outcomes.
- Communicate effectively with customers, partners, executive leaders, and technical teams.
- Connect innovation, portfolio strategy, commercialization, and growth into a unified business vision.
How you'll be rewarded
Salary Range: $130,000 - $160,000 (commensurate with experience)
We are currently hiring for this position to fill a newly created position.
