SR. BETA PROGRAM MANAGER

Company Description

Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc. is an industry-leading home, security and digital products company. We’re focused on exciting opportunities within the home, security and commercial building markets. Our driving purpose is to elevate every life by transforming spaces into havens. We believe our work and our brands can have incredibly positive impacts for not just our business and shareholders, but for people and the planet, too.

At Fortune Brands, we’re building something big. We’re advancing exciting innovations in all of our products and processes. We’re delivering trust, dependability, sustainability, and style. To make it all happen, we’ve transformed our workplace into an environment where smart, ambitious people have the support to reach their fullest potential.

When you join Fortune Brands, you become part of a high-performing team empowered to think big, learn fast and make bold decisions. We support an inclusive culture where everyone is encouraged be their authentic selves, and where our differences and unique perspectives are a key strength.

Explore life at Fortune Brands here.

Job Description

The Sr. Beta Program Manager is a hands-on leadership role at the center of Fortune Brands Innovations’ connected product validation strategy. This is not a project coordination role — it is a quality-focused, field-oriented program lead who owns the end-to-end consumer validation lifecycle across alpha, beta, and delta phases for smart home products spanning hardware, firmware, mobile applications, and cloud software.

This role demands a candidate who combines the analytical rigor of a QA engineer, the cross-functional fluency of a product manager, and the field instincts of a hands-on technologist. You will be a trusted partner to QA, Engineering, Software Product Management, Hardware (Category) Product Management, UX, and Customer Support — and a vocal, data-backed advocate for real-world product quality.

This role requires someone who rolls up their sleeves: reproducing reported issues, triaging bug quality before JIRA import, differentiating true defects from feature requests, and holding the line on release readiness — backed by data, not diplomacy.

POSITION LOCATION: This position can work hybrid in either Deerfield, IL or San Francisco, CA. 

RESPONSIBILITIES: 

Consumer Validation Program Ownership

• Design and execute end-to-end consumer validation programs across alpha, beta, and delta stages for connected hardware, firmware, mobile apps, and cloud services.
• Develop structured test plans, targeted test scenarios, and use-case libraries with Product Management, QA, and Engineering — ensuring coverage of real-world edge cases.
• Manage simultaneous test programs with discipline: tester recruitment, device logistics, NDA and trade compliance, communications cadence, and issue tracking.
• Recruit and manage diverse, global tester pools segmented by persona, device type, geography, and platform to ensure representation across target markets.
• Monitor tester engagement; identify and address participation risks early to prevent drop-off and sustain high-quality feedback throughout test cycles.
• Coordinate required software builds, firmware versions, and hardware units to ensure program readiness across all phases.
• Partner with shipping and logistics teams to ensure on-time device delivery for synchronized program launches.

Bug Triage, Signal Quality & QA Partnership

• Reproduce reported bugs from Centercode prior to JIRA import — verifying steps to reproduce, capturing logs/screenshots/video, and confirming device, firmware, and app version context.
• Work daily with QA to validate issue severity and classification ahead of bug scrubs; serve as the first quality gate for every ticket entering the engineering queue.
• Distinguish between verified software bugs, hardware/firmware defects, environment issues, duplicate reports, and feature requests — and reduce vague or non-actionable submissions through improved survey design, targeted feedback prompts, and tester education.
• Actively participate in cross-functional bug scrub sessions with QA, Engineering, and Product; present pre-triaged, evidence-backed issues with clear severity assessments.
• Own the Centercode-to-JIRA workflow: enforce submission quality standards, establish import criteria, and refine feedback templates to raise the baseline quality of inbound reports.
• Track issues from initial report through resolution; follow up with Engineering to confirm closure and communicate outcomes back to testers.

Data, Insights & AI-Powered Analysis

• Use Claude AI and