Lead Product Manager
2 days ago
Dallas
Job Description We're looking for an experienced Lead Product Manager to lead product strategy and discovery for our next-generation digital customer experiences. This isn't a role where you'll manage a backlog of stakeholder requests. This is a role where you'll own outcomes, lead continuous discovery, and build products that customers love while driving measurable business impact. As a Lead PM, you'll work at the intersection of customer needs, business strategy, and emerging technology-particularly AI/ML-to discover and deliver solutions that transform how millions of customers experience connectivity, personalization, and digital services. You'll operate as part of an empowered product trio (PM, Designer, Engineer) with the autonomy to discover the right solutions and the accountability to deliver meaningful outcomes. You'll be joining a digital product organization that's committed to modern product practices: we practice continuous discovery with weekly customer touchpoints, we use opportunity solution trees to visualize our thinking, we run assumption tests before building, and we measure success by outcomes, not output. What You'll Do Product Strategy & Outcomes • Own and drive product strategy for [specific product area], defining clear outcome-based objectives that align with business goals, • Translate business strategy into product strategy, identifying the critical problems we need to solve to achieve our desired outcomes, • Set and manage team OKRs that empower your product trio to discover solutions rather than build prescribed features, • Develop product vision and roadmap that balances short-term impact with long-term strategic positioning, • Identify opportunities where AI/ML can create differentiated customer value and build business leverage Continuous Discovery • Lead weekly customer interviews and research activities with your product trio to maintain continuous customer contact, • Map and prioritize opportunities using opportunity solution trees, ensuring your team is always working on the highest-impact problems, • Design and run assumption tests and experiments to validate solutions before committing to full development, • Synthesize customer insights, market trends, and data analytics to inform product decisions, • Build rapid prototypes and MVPs to test hypotheses with real customers and iterate based on learning AI/ML Product Development • Identify and prioritize opportunities where generative AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics can solve customer problems or create business value, • Partner with data science and ML engineering teams to scope, design, and ship AI-powered features and experiences, • Define success metrics and measurement frameworks for AI/ML initiatives, including model performance, customer satisfaction, and business impact, • Navigate the unique challenges of AI product development: managing uncertainty, setting appropriate quality bars, handling edge cases, and building responsible AI practices, • Stay current on AI/ML capabilities and trends, translating technical possibilities into customer-valuable product opportunities Cross-Functional Leadership • Build and maintain strong collaborative relationships with engineering, design, data science, marketing, operations, and business stakeholders, • Influence without authority across the organization, using data, customer insights, and strategic thinking to build alignment, • Coach and elevate product thinking across your immediate team and the broader organization, • Navigate organizational complexity to ship products, managing dependencies and aligning diverse stakeholders around shared outcomes, • Present product strategy, discovery learnings, and business results to senior leadership Team Development & Culture • Champion continuous discovery, experimentation, and customer-centricity across the organization, • Model the behaviors of an empowered product team: showing work, sharing learning, defaulting to action with appropriate risk management, • Contribute to building a product culture that values outcomes over outputs and learning over perfection Qualifications • Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, Business, Design, or related field required, • MBA or advanced technical degree (MS in CS, Data Science, HCI) preferred but not required, • Continuous learning through books, courses, conferences more important than formal Product Management Excellence: • 7+ years of product management experience building digital products, with at least 3 years in a senior or lead role, • Proven track record of shipping successful products that delivered measurable customer and business outcomes, • Experience owning product strategy end-to-end: from discovery through delivery to measuring impact, • Deep understanding of modern product practices including continuous discovery, assumption testing, and outcome-based roadmapping, • Portfolio of products where you can demonstrate the progression from customer problem to shipped solution to measured impact AI/ML Product Experience: • 1+ years of hands-on experience building and shipping AI/ML-powered products or features, • Direct experience working with data science and ML engineering teams to scope, develop, and deploy machine learning models in production, • Understanding of AI/ML product lifecycle: data requirements, model training and evaluation, deployment considerations, monitoring, and continuous improvement, • Experience with at least one of the following AI/ML applications: recommendation systems, personalization engines, natural language processing/LLMs, predictive analytics, computer vision, or conversational AI, • Demonstrated ability to translate technical AI/ML capabilities into valuable customer experiences, • Experience defining success metrics and quality standards for AI-powered features, including both model performance metrics and customer/business outcomes Continuous Discovery Practices: • Demonstrated experience conducting regular customer interviews and research as part of product development (not delegated to a research team), • Experience using opportunity solution trees, customer journey maps, or similar frameworks to visualize discovery work, • Track record of running assumption tests, prototypes, and experiments to validate ideas before building, • Comfortable working in ambiguity and making decisions with incomplete information, then learning quickly through experimentation Cross-Functional Leadership: • Proven ability to influence and align diverse stakeholders including executives, engineering leaders, designers, and business partners, • Experience leading product trios or cross-functional teams where decision-making is collaborative, not hierarchical, • Strong communication skills: can articulate strategy, rally teams around outcomes, and present to senior leadership, • Experience managing complex products with multiple dependencies and stakeholders Strongly Preferred Experience Domain Expertise: • Experience in telecommunications, consumer digital services, B2C/B2B2C products, or enterprise SaaS, • Background in products serving millions of users at scale, • Experience with personalization, recommendation systems, or customer engagement platforms, • Understanding of digital commerce, subscription models, or customer lifecycle management Advanced AI/ML: • Experience with generative AI products or integrating LLMs (GPT, Claude, Gemini etc.) into customer-facing applications, • Familiarity with responsible AI practices: bias detection, fairness, transparency, privacy, and ethical AI development, • Experience with AI-powered customer service, conversational interfaces, or intelligent automation, • Understanding of data pipelines, feature engineering, and the infrastructure needed to support ML at scale Product Leadership: • Experience coaching or mentoring other product managers, • Track record of improving product practices or culture within an organization, • Experience leading transformation from feature teams to empowered product teams, • Public speaking, writing, or thought leadership in product management Technical Depth: • Background in software engineering or technical degree (Computer Science, Engineering, etc.), • Ability to read code and engage in technical discussions with engineering teams, • Understanding of modern software architectures, APIs, cloud platforms, and data infrastructure, • Experience with analytics tools, A/B testing platforms, and product instrumentation Core Product Skills • Strategic Thinking: Ability to connect customer problems to business strategy and translate strategy into actionable product direction, • Customer Empathy: Deep curiosity about customers, their contexts, and their unmet needs; cognitive empathy to understand diverse user perspectives, • Critical Thinking: Can analyze complex problems, identify root causes, and generate multiple solution hypotheses, • Decision-Making: Comfortable making decisions with incomplete information while managing risk appropriately, • Execution Excellence: Ability to move from insight to shipped product with speed and quality AI/ML Product Competencies • Technical Fluency: Can engage in detailed conversations about model design, performance, and trade-offs, • Problem Framing: Ability to identify problems well-suited for AI/ML solutions vs. those better solved with traditional approaches, • Experimentation Mindset: Comfortable with the iterative, probabilistic nature of ML development and can design appropriate testing frameworks, • Quality Standards: Can define what "good enough" means for AI features, balancing accuracy, latency, cost, and customer experience, • Responsible AI: Awareness of bias, fairness, privacy, and ethical considerations in AI product development Discovery & Research Skills: • Interview Technique: Skilled at conducting story-based customer interviews that reveal genuine needs and behaviors, • Synthesis: Ability to find patterns across qualitative and quantitative data to identify high-impact opportunities, • Assumption Testing: Can design and run rapid experiments to test critical assumptions before building, • Visual Thinking: Comfortable using frameworks like opportunity solution trees, story maps, or journey maps to organize thinking Collaboration & Influence • Stakeholder Management: Can build trust and alignment with diverse stakeholders through transparency and data-driven storytelling, • Influential Communication: Persuasive written and verbal communication; can tailor message to technical and non-technical audiences, • Coaching: Able to elevate the product thinking of teammates, engineers, and designers through questions and frameworks, • Conflict Navigation: Skilled at finding win-win solutions when stakeholders have competing priorities Personal Attributes • High Agency: Takes ownership, seeks solutions, and drives outcomes without waiting for permission, • Intellectual Curiosity: Constantly learning about customers, technology, market, and craft, • Resilience: Comfortable with setbacks, failed experiments, and course corrections, • Humility: Willing to be wrong, learn from mistakes, and give credit generously, • Adaptability: Thrives in fast-changing environments with evolving priorities Benefits: Healthcare Insurance: Synectics offers eligible employees and their dependents healthcare coverage through BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois. Eligibility begins on the 1st day of the calendar month following 60 days of continuous full time employment with Synectics. Premiums are subsidized by Synectics. Dental Insurance: Synectics offers eligible employees and their dependents a dental plan through MetLife. Eligibility begins on the 1st day of the calendar month following 60 days of continuous full time employment with Synectics. Vision Insurance: Synectics offers eligible employees vision insurance through VSP. Eligibility begins on the 1st day of the calendar month following 60 days of continuous full time employment with Synectics.401(k) Plan: The Synectics Inc. Investment Savings Retirement Plan. Synectics offers all employees who are 21 years of age or older the opportunity to invest in the 401(k) Plan on the first enrollment date that is at least 30 days after employment begins. Enrollment dates are each January 1st, April 1st, July 1st, and October 1st. Technical Certification Bonus: Synectics is pleased to award its employees a bonus of up to $500 for an approved professional certification. In determining the bonus amount, Synectics will consider the cost of the test(s) for any certification relating to your current position, achieved during your employment with us. Only one Certification Bonus per calendar year may be awarded per employee. Only current, active employees will be eligible to receive this bonus. It will be awarded 90 days after the Synectics office has received documentation confirming the successful completion of the certification. Synectics is an equal opportunity employer. Company DescriptionSynectics is a leading staffing and workforce solutions company dedicated to connecting exceptional talent with top organizations. We specialize in IT, engineering, finance, healthcare, and professional services recruitment, offering both contract and permanent staffing solutions. With a people-first approach, we focus on understanding the unique needs of our clients and candidates to create long-term, successful matches. Our mission is to empower businesses with the right talent while helping professionals achieve rewarding career opportunitiesSynectics is a leading staffing and workforce solutions company dedicated to connecting exceptional talent with top organizations. We specialize in IT, engineering, finance, healthcare, and professional services recruitment, offering both contract and permanent staffing solutions. With a people-first approach, we focus on understanding the unique needs of our clients and candidates to create long-term, successful matches. Our mission is to empower businesses with the right talent while helping professionals achieve rewarding career opportunities