Customer Segment Product Manager

Career Area:

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other.  We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

The CTCT division (a joint venture between Trimble and Caterpillar) exists to create the industry standard grade control platform, enabling the development of positioning and control products for earthmoving, paving and compaction machines in the construction, mining and landfill industries, using technologies such as GNSS, optical total stations, lasers and sonics. The products are used in a range of applications where the operator of the machine benefits from having accurate horizontal and vertical guidance and the office benefits from rich data collected on the machine.

The Customer Segment Product Manager is primarily responsible for establishing the strategy for a given customer segment. This serves as the "North Star" for our product teams, providing the necessary guidance and focus to align their individual product-level strategies with broader business goals. To achieve this, you will cultivate a deep understanding of unique customer needs by spending time, alongside parent partners and our Customer Research team, with end-users and distribution channels. Working with those parent partners and our Customer Research team, you will translate these insights into a cohesive segment strategy. A critical component of this role is the establishment and management of a Segment Cohort—a highly engaged group of representative users who provide the continuous feedback loop necessary for validated innovation.

As the designated Subject Matter Expert (SME) for your segment, you will act as a strategic advisor to product development teams, ensuring their roadmaps and execution remain grounded in segment-specific realities. You will also partner closely with our Competitive Intelligence Manager to deeply understand and mitigate competitive pressures, while simultaneously serving as a bridge between parent groups and internal teams to synchronize knowledge and strategy. Ultimately, your success is defined by our collective ability to win within your specific segment, ensuring our products are not just functional, but essential to the customers who use them.

What You Will Do:

Customer Segment Expertise

• Parents and CTCT have a shared understanding of the unique characteristics, and thus the unique value proposition, of that segment
• Parents and CTCT are able to make decisions on “% Focus” for that segment based on opportunity and strategic alignment
• CTCT Product Teams have a strategic framework to guide roadmaps that will be successful in the targeted segment
• CTCT Product Teams have a segment SME they can engage when building their roadmaps
• Parents have an idealized Segment-specific GTM strategy that they can choose to leverage
• Continuous customer engagement, as well as current industry trends, competitive and market insights, inform segment strategies

Engaged and Representative Customer Access

• We have a customer segment cohort for the org to work with in all phases of learning
• We have a good understanding of what internal field experience we have in targeted segments
• The customer cohort includes diversity that is representative of the larger segment (regions, machine types, applications, etc.)
• Access to customers is not a deterrent for getting field feedback
• Customer partners in the cohort remain engaged because interactions are at an appropriate frequency
• Customer partners in the cohort remain engaged because they feel it is a mutually beneficial relationship
   

Deliver Stakeholder Needs

• Communicate the segment vision and strategy to stakeholders, both internally and externally (tell the “Segment Story”)
• Product, GTM, analytics and New Technology strategies for the specific customer segments
• Guide the adoption of OKR alignment and use of a dashboard to track and measure success
• Keep stakeholders in the loop
• Deliver outcomes to the expected level of quality
• Help stakeholders articulate the problems that need to be solved

Serve the Organization

• Act as a servant leader and effect change through influence and inspiration
• Collaborate with Parents, Product Managers, Customer Research, Verification and Validation, Design a