The Principal Product Owner (Hardware) is responsible for the vision and realization of the hardware product set within the Mobile Robotics Business Unit. As a key leader in product development, you will be responsible for working with customers and key internal stakeholders across engineering, marketing, operations, quality, and sales to bring a voice and story to current and expected customer requirements, translating such into product and technical features for the business unit to develop. You will leverage your strong leadership and organizational skills to maintain a steady development plan for product offerings, ordering and managing the backlog of hardware features and issues to ensure that the work defined is meaningful to customers yet realistic and attainable for the development teams, accepting or rejecting work at the appropriate intervals during development. This position reports to the Head of Strategy and Product Development for the Mobile Robotics Business Unit. Expected travel from 0% to 20% of the time (post-pandemic).

Responsibilities:

• Vision and Direction
  • Own and manage the hardware product roadmap, integrating business unit strategy, customer requirements, industry trends, competitive information, and business capability.
  • Identify and benchmark existing and emerging technologies to influence engineering direction in a manner that most fully enables ongoing execution of the product roadmap.
  • Lead the creation of product requirements, specifications, and verification documentation, maintaining such under change management and tracking achievement on a regular basis.
  • Coordinate with product leads across the company to identify opportunities for product collaboration and intra-company product competitiveness concerns, while maintaining an awareness of vendor or partner engagements that may support or hinder product direction.
• Product Execution
  • Prioritize hardware product deliverables according to needs and objectives of stakeholders while managing scope, budget, and time constraints. Own and manage the corresponding hardware backlog, mapping dependencies into the necessary sequence for development.
  • Work closely with engineering managers and leads to ensure rapid execution and on time, high quality delivery of complex products. Coordinate key milestones, status, and risk mitigation paths with program management.
  • Act as primary product communicator and link between stakeholders and teams, ensuring there is buy in from stakeholders on all major hardware decisions and clear and timely instruction on deliverable execution.
  • Work in conjunction with business unit solution architects to characterize customer needs, and identify variances from current offerings, deployment timeframes, and integration into execution flow for appropriate solutions.
• Process Management
  • Work with stakeholders to identify and organize the steps required for each development iteration, refining the process, evaluating execution, and identifying improvement areas.
  • Take a primary role in inspecting and evaluating product progress through each iteration, monitoring performance and deliverable achievement, and deciding if the goals for each iteration have been attained before the next iteration can proceed as planned.
  • Coordinate hardware and software workflow integration with the software product owner and with technical teams through requirements analysis, interface definition, test design, and risk analysis.
  • Drive a Lean-focused, continual approach for improvement of new standards, processes and procedures that streamline product development interactions and communication across the business unit.

Experience:

• BS degree in engineering, operations or related field with 8+ years related experience
• Strong understanding of the product development process focused on hardware development
• Experience implementing Agile methodologies for hardware and operating as a Product Owner
• Knowledge of industrial automation, electronics, mechanics, optics, and networking spaces
• Demonstrated ability in authoring formal design and/or test documentation
• Experience in the use of operational and financial metrics to drive business decisions
• Proficient in Atlassian (JIRA, Confluence) and MS tools (Project, Power Point, Excel, Word, Visio)
• Experience engaging with customers successfully and professionally to capture business needs
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with articulation pertinent to audience level

Personal Characteristics:

• The successful candidate must bring intellectual, professional and personal values that complement the team. Certain characteristics will be vital:
  • A mission-driven team player with outstanding communication skills and a balanced ego, able to foster a positive culture and implement business practices in a customer focused manner.
  • Strong personal initiative and self-starter mentality; needs the ability to thrive in a rapidly changing, fast-paced entrepreneurial environment.
  • Strong, decisive and action-oriented style; ability to make, communicate, and take accountability for timely decisions and ability to get to the heart of issues rapidly.
  • Ability to span from the big picture to the small, addressing from higher-level business needs to detailed technical work breakdown structure elements.
  • Abiliy to wear multiple hats from time to time: strategy, engineering development, market analysis, financial planning, program management.