Technical Product Manager

Project Details

The TPM will help define the experiences and use cases for future vehicle platforms and translate those into product requirements that ultimately influence:

o Hardware component selection

o Vehicle architecture

o Systems architecture

o Embedded systems

o Software and firmware development

Duties/Day to Day Overview

Responsibilities:

-Define your product areas across our current vehicle and future platform

-Own the successful execution of the product across its lifecycle

-Develop a deep understanding of the customer, market, and business objectives to find new opportunities and align your product domain to company goals

-Be the Product Owner in a highly cross-functional product development process spanning HW, FW, SW, and operations

Ruthlessly prioritize features and ensure priorities are clearly communicated at all times.

The PM will define:

Customer use cases

Customer interaction scenarios

Desired vehicle experiences

Product requirements supporting those experiences

Those product requirements then influence engineering decisions such as:

Hardware component selection

Vehicle architecture

Systems architecture

Embedded controller requirements

Memory requirements

Physical packaging within the vehicle

Cost

If engineering determines that an embedded controller exceeds its cost target and its available memory needs to be reduced, the PM needs to understand:

1. Which customer use cases are driving those hardware requirements.

2. Which product capabilities are most important.

3. What functionality can be reprioritized.

4. What compromises can be made without losing the most important product intent.

Top Requirements

(Must haves)

Qualifications:

-Bachelor's degree in a technical discipline (engineering, computer science, or related field) required, with the technical fluency to engage credibly with HW, FW, and SW teams

-6+ years of direct product management experience bringing 0->1 products to market in the automotive or AV space

-You are a shrewd negotiator and can influence a wide array of stakeholders to quickly drive decisions and consensus

-You can balance long-term strategic objectives against near-term tactical wins

-You're a self-starter that has a track record of taking action and delivering

-You're adept at critical thinking and can navigate complex tradeoffs in a structured way

Product Management Experience

Looking for approximately 6+ years of experience.

Must have actual Product Manager experience.

Hiring manager specifically emphasized that product-adjacent experience is not enough.

Candidate should demonstrate a strong, established product point of view/product sense.

Needs to approach decisions from a deeply customer-centric perspective.

Should have experience developing customer-facing products or experiences.

Automotive Experience

Automotive experience is a major preference.

The ideal candidate would have a combination of:

Vehicle development experience

Automotive product development

Embedded systems / embedded software exposure

Software-defined vehicle or software-defined feature development

Experience connecting vehicle hardware requirements with customer-facing product experiences

The hiring manager acknowledged that finding someone with both vehicle development and software-defined feature experience may be difficult, but that combination represents the strongest target profile.

Technical Background

This is not purely a business-side Product Manager.

Candidates should understand enough about the underlying technology to effectively partner with engineering and make product trade-offs involving:

Vehicle hardware

Embedded systems

Embedded controllers

Software

Firmware

Systems architecture

Hardware architecture

Memory / compute constraints

Cost constraints

Vehicle packaging and physical space constraints

They do not necessarily need to be engineers themselves, but they need enough technical depth to understand how product decisions affect engineering and hardware.

Tools & Processes

Specific tooling is not considered a major barrier, as the hiring manager believes tools can generally be learned.

Current tools mentioned include:

Jira for work/project tracking

Google Docs for developing PRDs

Polarion for more mature requirements management

Figma on the design side

Google Workspace

Tool expertise should therefore be secondary to:

1. Product management experience

2. Automotive/vehicle experience

3. Product sense

4. Embedded/hardware technical understanding

5. Stakeholder management

6. Customer-centric thinking