Proto Labs, Inc

Technical Product Manager , Fight Friction

Proto Labs, Inc$107K — $161K *
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Degree in Business, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
  • 4+ years' experience in technical product management, preferably with software engineering
  • Direct experience collaborating with Sales and Customer Success teams
  • Experience coordinating cross-functional delivery without direct authority

Responsibilities

  • Own and manage the product roadmap for the ecosystem area, balancing new developments and quality improvements
  • Translate needs into requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria for engineering
  • Prioritize the backlog using a framework that considers engineering capacity and impact
  • Collaborate with engineering leads on release planning and coordinate launch activities
  • Define and measure success metrics for completed work based on adoption and quality
  • Identify friction points by partnering with Sales and Customer Success, turning them into actionable tasks
  • Establish a reliable feedback loop for Sales and Customer Success to report issues

Benefits

  • Health Insurance options including traditional or high deductible plans
  • Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts with employer contributions
  • Comprehensive dental and vision coverage
  • Paid caregiver leave and at least 3 weeks of PTO plus additional benefits
  • 401k plan with company match and immediate vesting
  • Employee Stock Purchase Program at a discounted rate
  • Matching grants through the Protolabs foundation
Full Job Description
What You'll Do

  • Own and maintain the product roadmap for the assigned ecosystem area, balancing new capability development against friction-reduction and quality-of-experience work
  • Translate business and customer needs into clear requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria for the engineering team
  • Prioritize the backlog using a consistent framework, balancing engineering capacity, customer/business impact, and cross-functional input
  • Partner with engineering leads on release planning, scope trade-offs, and delivery timelines; coordinate launch and rollout activities
  • Define and track success metrics for shipped work, including adoption, quality, and friction-reduction indicators
  • Partner directly with Sales and Customer Success to systematically surface friction points across the ecosystem - including lost or stalled deals, recurring support escalations, churn signals, and workaround patterns - and translate them into a prioritized, actionable backlog
  • Act as the coordination point between engineering, Sales, and Customer Success so that friction-related fixes move through hand-offs cleanly rather than stalling between teams, despite having no direct authority over those teams
  • Establish and run a recurring intake and feedback loop (e.g., regular syncs, a shared submission process, or office hours) so Sales and Customer Success have a known, reliable channel for raising friction issues rather than relying on ad hoc escalation
  • Report on friction-reduction progress using concrete before/after metrics (e.g., ticket volume, time-to-resolution, deal-blocking issues resolved, repeat-escalation rate), and communicate that progress back to Sales, Customer Success, and engineering leadership
  • Facilitate trade-off conversations when friction-reduction priorities compete with other roadmap commitments, ensuring decisions and rationale are visible to all stakeholders
  • Represent the voice of the customer and front-line teams in engineering planning and prioritization discussions
  • Identify opportunities for continuous improvement in how the team identifies, triages, and resolves ecosystem friction.


What It Takes

  • A degree in Business, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
  • 4+ years' experience in technical product management, ideally supporting a software engineering team
  • Experience working directly with Sales and/or Customer Success teams, ideally in a cross-functional, platform, or ecosystem-facing role
  • Experience coordinating delivery across multiple teams without direct authority over those teams


Preferred Qualifications
  • Prior experience in a platform, ecosystem, or internal-tools product role spanning multiple customer-facing teams
  • Experience building or running a formal intake/feedback process between product and go-to-market teams
  • Exposure to complex operational environments where technology, people and process all need to work together


You Might Be a Great Fit If

Product & analytical skills
  • Comfortable working with funnels, experiments and cost/benefit framing to support decisions
  • Ability to define clear success metrics and measure product performance against business outcomes and KPIs
  • User-centric mindset with the ability to balance customer, business and operational considerations


Collaboration & communication
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills with technical and non-technical stakeholders
  • Able to create clarity in complex domains and build alignment without direct authority
  • Pragmatic, decisive and impact-oriented: you focus on outcomes over outputs


What's In It For You!

  • We offer a competitive salary and total rewards package
  • We offer amazing benefits including but not limited to:
    • Health Insurance: Traditional OR High Deductible plan
    • Flexible Spending Accounts
    • Health Savings Account (including employer contributions)
    • Dental and Vision
    • Basic and Supplemental Life Insurance
    • Short-Term and Long-Term Disability
    • Paid caregiver leave
  • You will receive at least 3 weeks of PTO + Wellness + Holiday Pay + Volunteer Hours
  • 401k with company match and immediate vest
  • Employee Stock Purchase Program at a discounted rate
  • Matching grants through Protolabs foundation
  • And More!


$107,400 - $161,000 a year

Physical Demands:

While performing the essential duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use a computer keyboard, monitor and mouse, telephone and printer; reach with hands, and arms, talk, see and hear. The employee is occasionally required to stand, walk, stoop or kneel and must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.

Work Environment:

Indoors (A/C); nonsmoking; the majority of this job function is performed in an office setting requiring normal safety precautions. However, there may be job duties that require the employee to spend time in the manufacturing areas exposed to machinery and noise; eye protection occasionally required. Occasionally works in outside weather conditions. Occasionally works near moving mechanical parts and in high, precarious places and is occasionally exposed to wet and/or humid conditions, fumes or airborne particles, toxic or caustic chemicals, risk of electrical shock and vibration. The noise level in the work environment is usually quiet to moderate.

About Proto Labs, Inc

Proto Labs, Inc is a technology-enabled digital manufacturing company that produces custom parts for prototyping and short-run production. The company provides a range of services including 3D printing, CNC machining, and injection molding. Proto Labs serves customers in various industries including aerospace, automotive, medical, and consumer products. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Maple Plain, Minnesota.
Learn more about Proto Labs, Inc
Size
2,663 employees
Market Cap
$652.9 million
Industry
Net Income
$50.8 million
Founded
1999
5 Year Trend
+10.4%
Revenue
$434.3 million
NASDAQ

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