Director, Product Management (PM) Center of Excellence (CoE)

$177,000 - $284,000/Yr

Workiva - Charleston, SC

Full-time - Senior

Charleston, SC

Publishing Industries

About the position

As the Director, Product Management (PM) Center of Excellence (CoE), you'll be responsible for building and scaling a world-class product management function. You'll establish the skills, systems, frameworks, and processes that enable product managers to excel in their roles while driving consistency and quality in our product development approach. This role combines strategic leadership with hands-on development of product management capabilities. This role requires a unique combination of facilitation, training, coaching, process mapping, systems thinking and the ability to influence without direct authority. The ideal candidate will be passionate about product management excellence and have a proven track record of scaling product organizations through systems thinking and people development.

Responsibilities

• Formulate PM Center of Excellence strategy, develop and execute roadmap
• Drive change management, communication, and engagement across PMs, cross-functional teams, and leaders
• Design and implement a comprehensive product management system including frameworks, tools, templates, and best practices that scale across the organization
• Establish and maintain product management standards, methodologies, and rituals that drive consistency and quality
• Create and maintain a product management playbook that codifies best practices, processes, and guidelines
• Develop and track metrics and KPIs to measure the effectiveness of product management practices and identify areas for improvement
• Build and maintain a knowledge management system for sharing product management insights and learnings across teams
• Design and deliver product management training programs for different career stages
• Create onboarding programs for new product managers to ensure rapid effectiveness
• Establish mentorship and coaching programs to accelerate product manager growth
• Organize regular knowledge-sharing sessions, workshops, and product management community events
• Partner with People team to develop career frameworks, functional job levelling guides and growth paths for product managers
• Partner with the right functional orgs to support implementation of standardized approaches for customer research, experimentation, and product analytics
• Define and implement product-relevant processes in close collaboration with other operations teams
• Establish governance models and decision-making frameworks for product initiatives
• Create, drive implementation and maintain product management standards
• Identify and implement the right tools and tech stack plans to support PMs
• Partner with product leaders to understand their needs and ensure CoE initiatives drive meaningful impact
• Work with cross-functional teams (Program Management, Engineering, Design, Research, Data) to align on product management and development practices
• Build relationships with external product management communities to bring best practices into the organization
• Regular reporting to executive leadership on product management effectiveness and improvement initiatives
• Coach product leaders on implementing best practices within their teams

Requirements

• 10+ years of product management experience
• 5+ years in senior product leadership roles
• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of education and experience in a related field
• Proven track record in building and scaling product management practices in high-growth organizations
• Proven track record of collaborating with other product functions on developing healthy product triads

Nice-to-haves

• Experience building Centers of Excellence or similar organizational capabilities
• Track record of developing and delivering training programs
• Experience with change management and organizational transformation
• Experience designing and implementing product management frameworks and methodologies
• Experience with various product development methodologies (Agile, Lean, etc.)
• Background in product operations or similar scaling roles
• Strong background in product operations and process design
• Deep understanding of modern product management practices and tools
• Published thought leadership in product management
• MBA or relevant advanced degree

Benefits

• Salary range in the US: $177,000.00 - $284,000.00
• A discretionary bonus typically paid annually
• Restricted Stock Units granted at time of hire
• 401(k) match and comprehensive employee benefits package