Technical Product Manager

We are looking for an Engineering Manager that adopts Lean Startup, Agile and Human Centered Design practices to deliver innovative and transformative products to shape the future of Ford Motor Company's Ford Service Reservations Plus | Lincoln Service Reservations Plus. Product Managers will interact directly and continuously with a Product Manager, Software Engineers, Architects and Product Designers. 

 

The Product Manager will maintain an entrepreneurial mindset while working with the Product Team to understand a problem space, ideate and validate an ideal solution, and deliver an MVP that evolves through user and stakeholder feedback.  

 

Ford Motor Company's Ford Service Reservations Plus | Lincoln Service Reservations Plus is transforming the automotive service experience for Ford and Lincoln customers and dealers. We're building innovative digital products and services that streamline appointments, enhance remote services, and create a seamless, customer-centric journey. We partner closely with Ford and Lincoln dealerships and various Dealer Management System (DMS) providers. Our team is passionate about using a lean, human-centered approach to solve complex problems. 

What you’ll be able to do: 

• Maintain a balance between business viability, user desirability and technical feasibility while delivering software products with a team. 
• Work closely with Business Partners to define the product vision and break that vision down into an actionable backlog of user stories for the development team. 
• Work hands-on with the development team to prioritize, plan, and deliver software that meets requirements. 
• Have indepth knowledge of testing practices to facilitate end to end testing with a keen eye on quality. 
• Collaborate with the product team to define specs, requirements, and acceptance criteria for deliverables. 
• Deeply understand and define technical requirements – Able to define API’s, specify data structures, outline system integrations, consider performance implications, and understand the underlying architecture needed to deliver a feature or Product. 
• Evaluate Technical Feasibility and effot – Technically equipped to work with engineering leads to assess feasibility of a Technical solution or feature request. Able to estimate the complexity and resources required, which is crucial for planning and prioritization. 
• Understand Technical Risks and Dependencies – Identify potential technical roadblocks, security risks, or dependencies on other systems and work to mitigate them. 
• Help Business Partners understand our iterative development approach and our focus on incrementally delivering value through careful and deliberate prioritization. 
• Work with Product Designers to ensure timely delivery of designs and assets to the development team. 
• Help innovate and iterate on Agile PM processes and share our learnings, including montoring and managing DORA metrics. 
• Balance capacity with prioritized backlog items.  Ensure that team determines the release goals and has the confidence to realize them based on historical trends. 
• Monitor and act on System of Delivery metrics to improve team and product performance.   
• Coordinate with the product team to help surface risks early in the process to ensure they are handled appropriately.  
• Work with cross-product teams to identify and orchestrate dependency resolution. 
• Facilitate retrospectives to ensure teams understand what is working well for them, what should be continued and improved. Ensures teams take ownership of the action items and implements them. 

 

The minimum requirements we seek: 

• Bachelor’s degree  Computer Science or a closely related field of study or equivalent work experience (minimum of 12 years), or an associate degree with a minimum of 6 years of equivalent work experience, or a combination of education and work experience. 
• 8+ years of experience with progressive responsibilities in software development in a scaled agile environment 
• 2+ years of experience defining product vision, strategy, product roadmaps and creating and managing backlogs (Rally, JIRA or similar) 
• 4+ year of experience with lightweight product development methods such as user story mapping or rapid prototyping 
• 3+ years working with Agile software methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, eXtreme programming, Test-Driven development, Pair programming.) 

 

Our preferred requirements: 

• Strong leadership and communication skills, and the ability to teach others. 
• Ability to work collaboratively with others and navigate complex decision-making. 
• Ability to collaborate well with software engineers, designers, and business partners. 
• Previous success delivering