Director of Product Operations

Fortive•Greenville, SC

14h

About The Position

Gordian is evolving toward durable product teams with clearer business accountability, stronger customer orientation, faster learning cycles, and increasingly AI-enabled ways of working. The Director of Product Operations will build and run the operating system for the Product organization, translating product strategy into repeatable mechanisms for planning, prioritization, execution, measurement, and learning. The role connects Product, Engineering, Design, and go-to-market organizations so teams have the standards, insights, tools, and operating rhythms needed to deliver measurable customer and business outcomes. This is not a traditional PMO role. Success is measured by whether product teams make better decisions, execute with greater speed and predictability, and deliver stronger outcomes—not by status reporting or process administration. The role anchors the Product Center of Excellence and partners closely with Product Unit leaders, Engineering leaders, and the CPO to continuously improve how Gordian builds products. The Director owns and improves the product development lifecycle from idea through discovery, development, launch, adoption, and iteration; connects company strategy to product investment through planning and governance; and creates a trusted, actionable view of product performance. The role also develops Product Management standards, practices, onboarding, and career frameworks; establishes a shared Product and Engineering operating cadence; and leads the strategy for product tools, information governance, automation, and AI-enabled workflows. The Director leads and develops the Product Operations organization, setting its charter, capabilities, and centralized versus embedded activities. Success means product strategy is executable; leaders have reliable visibility into portfolio investment, progress, risks, capacity, and outcomes; operating mechanisms reduce friction; decisions are evidence-driven; Product and Engineering plan, deliver, and measure as one system; PM capability improves; and AI becomes embedded in product work. Gordian is part of Fortive. Gordian provides facility and construction cost data, software, and services across the building lifecycle.

Requirements

8+ years of progressive experience in Product Management, Product Operations, product strategy, technical program management, or comparable software leadership roles.
Experience building or scaling Product Operations within a complex software or technology organization.
Demonstrated experience designing product operating models, planning processes, and portfolio governance.
Strong understanding of modern product discovery, product development, and product measurement practices.
Experience working closely with Product, Engineering, UX/Research, Finance, Sales, and Customer Success.
Strong analytical capability and demonstrated ability to turn fragmented operational and product data into executive-level insight.
Experience influencing senior leaders and driving organizational change without relying solely on positional authority.
Strong executive communication skills and ability to simplify complex organizational problems.
Experience leading and developing high-performing teams.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

B2B SaaS experience.
Experience transforming a product organization from project/delivery orientation toward persistent product teams and outcome ownership.
Experience implementing product analytics and product performance frameworks.
Experience building Product Management competency and career frameworks.
Experience with AI-enabled product-development workflows.
Experience operating across a portfolio containing both mature products and new growth businesses.
Experience in construction technology, facilities management, capital planning, procurement, or adjacent markets.

Responsibilities

Own and continuously improve Gordian’s product development lifecycle and operating model from idea through discovery, development, launch, adoption, and iteration.
Establish a scalable Product, Engineering, and Design lifecycle, including minimum standards, decision points, and artifacts for each stage.
Create mechanisms to move ideas from strategic opportunity through validation, investment, and delivery while reducing unnecessary handoffs, meetings, and process overhead.
Drive adoption of AI-native workflows for product discovery, analysis, documentation, and execution.
Run annual and quarterly product planning processes and establish consistent prioritization and investment frameworks across product units.
Provide portfolio-level visibility into strategic initiatives, investments, capacity, risks, and expected outcomes; facilitate portfolio trade-offs with Product and Technology leadership.
Maintain decision records and accountability for major investments, and connect roadmap investments to customer, strategic, and financial outcomes.
Partner with Product Unit leaders, Finance, and Technology to define and operationalize product performance measures, and turn them into actionable insights for Product leadership.
Establish common Product Management expectations, competencies, and career frameworks while standardizing essential practices and preserving product-unit autonomy.
Create reusable methods and playbooks for discovery, voice of the customer, segmentation, business cases, prioritization, roadmaps, and product measurement.
Build onboarding and ongoing development programs for Product Managers, establish communities of practice, and partner on capability assessment and organizational development.
Partner with Technology leadership to establish a Product and Engineering operating cadence, including reviews focused on outcomes, decisions, risks, and learning.
Create transparency into commitments, dependencies, and delivery health; identify systemic bottlenecks and improve how work flows through the organization.
Partner on appropriate delivery and engineering effectiveness measures, and ensure executive reviews focus on decisions and intervention rather than status reporting.
Own the Product organization’s operating toolchain strategy; simplify and rationalize tools, workflows, and data; and establish common information architecture and governance.
Automate repetitive product-management and reporting work where practical, drive adoption of AI-enabled workflows, and experiment with methods that increase PM leverage and organizational learning.
Lead and develop the Product Operations organization, set its charter and priorities, build team capabilities, clarify centralized versus embedded activities, eliminate low-value administrative work, and improve the effectiveness of the broader Product organization.