Associate Director, Product Management - Office of General Counsel

The Associate Director, Product Management leads a product team (typically 2-3) responsible for a specific product or set of products. This role works with a high level of autonomy and discretion. Responsibilities include leading the team’s research and product development efforts as well as implementation and execution of the product strategy, as well as managing and developing their team members. In addition, this role manages the various stakeholders and removes barriers for the team. Although the associate director manages a team and its work on a set of products, they may also have responsibility for their own products and all strategic and tactical work associated with designing and delivering the products within scope of responsibility.

Essential Job Functions:

• People Management Establishes network within FINRA, begins to build internal and external networks
• Demonstrates understanding of performance bar and effectively applies to hiring decisions
• Effectively sets expectations and builds robust launch plans for new team members
• Provides regular coaching and feedback to direct reports to help grow individual functional skills and leadership capability, with support from senior managers
• Works with cross-functional leaders and experts to establish best practices and identify opportunities to improve the product development and delivery process
• Sets goals for individuals to achieve team or function level goals
• Continuously improves their knowledge of performance improvement management and holds team members accountable for performance
• Provides input into resource planning discussions

People Strategy

• Understands and communicates vision for team members
• Assesses behaviors and coaches direct reports to demonstrate FINRA values and PM behaviors in their role
• Identify talent needs to enable execution of product strategy

User Insight & Product Definition

• Develops deep understanding of the business and product areas within the product group, as well as the relevant data that can be used to inform key decisions
• Defines multiple products and/or complex products and identifies gaps and user needs by creating vision, strategy, and requirements documents for product(s)
• Utilizes available data or commissions new research to identify user needs
• Performs experiments and organizes primary research to uncover additional user value

Product Portfolio Management

• Develops, manages, and owns the product roadmap for multiple products and/or complex products
• Makes trade-off decisions for multiple products in a product group
• Demonstrates expertise across multiple products which facilitates discovery and drives enterprise capabilities
• Builds partnerships with relevant stakeholder teams
• Coordinates with interdependent teams and influences leadership to drive efficiencies
• Builds and leverages solid working relationships with business and product stakeholders, UI/UX, architecture, and technology teams to facilitate product and user success
• Participates in the intake process for their product domain

Product Planning & Prioritization

• Leads the product planning process across multiple products and/or complex products by overseeing the development of requirements documents (user stories, acceptance criteria, use cases) for products or product releases
• Maintains a prioritized backlog based on defined user value, aligning with product strategy and resource capacity; uses data and analytics to prioritize the product backlog appropriately
• Works closely with UI/UX to set the direction for the design of the user experience for their products
• Determines and monitors release goals, prioritization, implementation, and iteration plans for their products according to user value
• Resolves problems that are escalated during the process

Product Development

• Facilitates the development process by reviewing demos with the technology team and validating acceptance criteria for multiple products and/or complex products
• Provides UX/UI approval for the assigned products
• Tracks the development work and drives resolution of escalated issues and bugs for their products
• Identifies issues that will keep their products from delivering on time or at the right level of quality, assesses alternatives to resolve, builds a plan for resolution, and directly resolves or communicates to leadership

Launch

• Leads large and sometimes highly complex product launches by working with relevant stakeholders to develop launch plans
• Identifies, reviews, and resolves issues and blockers in partnership with team members that may delay the launch or i