Lead, Product Management

CDM Smith is seeking a Product Management Lead to join our Digital Engineering Solutions team. At CDM Smith, we’re proud of our culture of innovation as an AEC firm that positively impacts the built environment, where we all live and work. The Product Management Lead we’re seeking will be part of the firm's digital transformation and will help define the long-term digital product vision, value proposition, product strategy, and product roadmap. In addition, this role will help guide cross‑functional teams through the entire product lifecycle, including stakeholder engagement across our architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) disciplines. This position is for a person who has demonstrated excellence as a product manager or product owner and enjoys framing a problem, shaping and creating solutions, and helping to champion implementation of technology solutions. As a member of the Digital Engineering Solutions team, this individual will also engage in research and development and the incubation of innovative ideas that arise from around the company. This role is highly business‑facing, with a strong focus on coordinating stakeholders, organizing their input, and ensuring development teams clearly understand business needs and priorities. Responsibilities Roadmap and vision: Leads and oversees highly complex and/or large commercial product roadmaps through collaboration with internal stakeholders and market strategy, sales and development teams. Prioritizes, refines, and manages the product roadmap for existing and proposed highly complex or large solutions within the market segment to meet key market and internal customer segment adoption milestones in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industries. Conducts foundational user research to gather and prioritize client needs and product requirements. Stakeholder engagement and requirements: Leads the process of engaging with internal customers and partners to gather requirements, prioritize needs, and understand business workflows. Conducts and guides more junior staff in conducting stakeholder feedback sessions, workshops and/or interviews. Translates feedback into user stories and use cases for implementation. Shares and communicates information about products to customers and users through blogs, white papers and presentations. Ensures that stakeholder input is organized, documented, and communicated in a way that can be clearly understood and acted on by Product Owners and development teams. Quality and testing: Performs acceptance testing for moderately to highly complex products. Documents findings and details to troubleshoot defects/bugs/errors. Works with the development team to replicate findings, perform root‑cause analysis, and define a resolution. Team coordination and delivery: Responsible for maximizing the output of the development team. Participates in product development from conception to launch. Works day‑to‑day with development teams to oversee the flow of technical work, including participating in routine Agile meetings. Leads collaborations, facilitates sprint activities, and creates and communicates requirement artifacts that translate business needs into executable requirements. Provides oversight and guidance to more junior product management and/or quality/test staff during product development, with a strong emphasis on coordination, clarity, and removing cross‑functional blockers rather than owning detailed technical design. Risk management: Communicates risks and partners with management to implement mitigation strategies. Contributes to the development of controls for an identified risk and obtains approval. Escalates risk events and/or gaps in a timely fashion through retrospectives and/or risk forum participation. Go‑to‑market, go‑live and communications: Partners with marketing to help develop and maintain go‑to‑market plans and sales collateral for products of high complexity or large size. Leads product demonstrations, delivers presentations to customers and prospects, and creates supporting marketing collateral for both internal tool launches and client‑facing digital solutions. People leadership: Leads, coaches, develops and trains assigned team members. Monitors staff workloads and provides team resources needed to ensure delivery of a high‑quality outcome to complete their jobs. Provides ongoing feedback of performance to direct reports and may conduct performance reviews. Approves time sheets and ensures company policies are followed. Performs other duties as required. Skills And Abilities Proficient in managing software products from inception to launch (preferably SaaS B2B software). Highly skilled at analyzing, thinking strategically, and providing creative solutions using technology. Excellent verbal and written communication and collaboration skills for working with team members, users, and external stakeholders. Good experience in design or engineering applications and technology for visualization, architecture, GIS, or analytics. Good knowledge of Agile software development practices and Product Management best practices. Ability to work with diverse internal and external stakeholders, at all levels of an organization, to extract informational needs and translate into detailed requirements/deliverables. Excellent interpersonal, presentation, and leadership skills to cultivate strategic relationships with colleagues, customers, and partners. Excellent self‑motivation, creative skills, and team‑oriented collaboration. Excellent ability to extract informational needs and translate into detailed requirements/deliverables. Demonstrated ability to coordinate cross‑functional work across business units, IT, marketing/communications, legal, finance and other functions to deliver complex initiatives. Comfortable acting as a connector between business stakeholders and technical teams, ensuring alignment and clarity without being the sole owner of the product backlog. Minimum Qualifications Bachelor's Degree. 8 years of relevant experience. Equivalent additional directly related experience will be considered in lieu of a college degree. Preferred Qualifications Experience as a product manager or product owner in an AEC, professional services, or B2B technology environment. Experience working on data, analytics, or AI‑enabled products or internal tools. Formal training or certification in Product Management, Agile/Scrum, or Change Management. Experience with stakeholder management and communications. Domestic and/or international travel may be required. The frequency of travel is contingent on specific duties, responsibilities, and the essential functions of the position, which may vary depending on workload and project demands. Background Check and Drug Testing Information: CDM Smith Inc. and its divisions and subsidiaries reserve the right to require background checks—including criminal, employment, education, licensure, etc.—as well as credit and motor vehicle checks when applicable for certain positions. Background checks are conducted after an offer of employment has been made in the United States. In addition, CDM Smith may conduct drug testing for designated positions. CDM Smith will conduct interviews of qualified individuals prior to requesting a criminal background check, and no job application submitted before such interview shall inquire into an applicant's criminal history. If this position is subject to a background check for any convictions related to its responsibilities and requirements, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background investigation including criminal history. Criminal history will not automatically disqualify a candidate. During employment, individuals may be required by CDM Smith or a CDM Smith client to successfully complete additional background checks, including motor vehicle record as well as drug testing. #J-18808-Ljbffr