IT Product Manager

Ford • Dearborn, MI

2d • $115,000 - $192,900 • Hybrid

About The Position

The IT Product Manager owns and leads the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for user-facing applications, emphasizing user experience, functionality, cross-product integrations, and intuitive front-end solutions. The role advocates for end users and ensures that product development meets user needs while delivering strong usability and functionality. It also ensures agency and contracted team members understand and complete their assigned work.

The Product Manager owns the product maps for the Global Safety and Ergonomics Tool (GSET) and Global Medical Employee Data (GMED), defines front-end product strategy, conducts research and industry analysis, and develops business cases for features and product work. The role leads UX discovery and design partnership, including reviewing supplier and Product Designer work, gathering user feedback, and iterating on solutions.

The role leads the Ford Privacy process for the health and safety PDO and oversees privacy setup, review, and approval for global and regional requirements. It works closely with engineers, developers, architects, integrated services, designers, business partners, and suppliers to establish feasibility, refine requirements, and deliver front-end products.

The Product Manager supports Agile product delivery by defining and prioritizing product work, maintaining a Jira backlog, contributing to ceremonies, coordinating release planning and communications, and leading User Acceptance Testing and user-focused release readiness. The role also manages stakeholder communications, product documentation, user feedback mechanisms, and measurement of product OKRs and KPIs.

Ford describes this role as salary grade 8, with a salary range of $115,000–$192,900. Visa sponsorship is not provided. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Systems, Business Administration, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 5 years of product management experience managing digital user-facing applications, front-end software solutions, or web/mobile platforms.
• Demonstrated experience owning the end-to-end product lifecycle, including product vision, discovery, roadmapping, backlog prioritization, User Acceptance Testing, and release management.
• Understanding of UX/UI principles, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, user flows, and usability testing.
• Experience partnering closely with Product Designers and guiding or approving visual and interaction designs.
• Hands-on experience in an Agile or Product Driven Organization (PDO) environment.
• Proficiency in writing clear user stories, epics, sagas, and acceptance criteria, such as in Gherkin format or BDD.
• Strong working knowledge of Jira or similar agile project and backlog management tools.
• Experience handling sensitive data, regulatory compliance, or privacy frameworks for global applications.
• Proven experience managing agency or supplier teams, cross-functional engineering teams, and enterprise business stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for status reports, SARs, executive summaries, and product documentation.
• Leadership, negotiation, and mentorship abilities to guide supplier teams, coordinate with QA and engineering, and align business owners.
• Ability to understand user pain points and turn them into intuitive digital experiences.
• Ability to align feature delivery with organizational digital strategies and business viability.

Nice To Haves

• Background or familiarity with enterprise Occupational Health & Safety or Medical/Employee Data systems.
• Understanding of modern front-end architectures, APIs, and cross-product integration patterns.
• Experience conducting user research, stakeholder interviews, lean experiments, and on-site observational studies such as Gemba walks or sessions.
• Experience defining, tracking, and optimizing product KPIs and OKRs related to user adoption, engagement, usability, performance, and other telemetry.

Responsibilities

• Own and manage the Global Safety and Ergonomics Tool (GSET) product map.
• Own and manage the Global Medical Employee Data (GMED) product map.
• Define and communicate the vision, strategy, and roadmap for front-end applications in alignment with broader organizational digital strategies.
• Research users, stakeholders, and industry trends to identify opportunities and inform product decisions.
• Develop business cases for new features, sagas, or epics, considering user desirability and business viability.
• Own the end-to-end user experience and translate business goals into user-centered designs.
• Approve supplier UX designs and lead, mentor, and review the work of a dedicated Product Designer, including visual and interactive designs.
• Discover and frame user problems through stakeholder and user interviews, concept testing, and usability testing.
• Ideate, test, and iterate product solutions through brainstorming, lean experiments, and direct user feedback.
• Lead and own the Ford Privacy process for the health and safety PDO; oversee global and regional privacy setup, review, and approval, and ensure reviewers and approvers are identified.
• Collaborate with software engineers, developers, architects, and integrated services or sources to discuss feasibility and review designs.
• Maintain an understanding of the technical architecture of the user interface and front-end applications.
• Co-define the release plan and process, and coordinate, implement, and manage Gemba sessions.
• Identify user stories and tasks and provide them to Project Managers for Jira assignment.
• Lead requirements gathering and refinement with end users, other ET application teams, and internal business partners.
• Translate requirements into clear, concise, testable sagas, epics, user stories, tasks, and acceptance criteria, including Gherkin-format work where appropriate.
• Approve supplier-written sagas, epics, user stories, tasks, and test cases.
• Champion Agile PDO methodology and participate in ceremonies such as sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Prioritize deliverables and maintain a healthy Jira product backlog focused on user-facing features and improvements.
• Create and manage agile ceremony meetings for sprint prioritization, release management, and release communications.
• Collaborate with business partners, engineering, and design teams to define MVPs and assess technical feasibility and user desirability.
• Lead and manage User Acceptance Testing and ensure user-focused product readiness for release.
• Participate in QA testing led by the Testing Engineer.
• Foster cross-functional collaboration and communicate product strategy, roadmaps, updates, and expectations to stakeholders.
• Approve assigned project status meetings, SARs, recaps, summaries, follow-ups, and next steps, and support governance and ad hoc meetings.
• Create and maintain documentation for user-facing features, including saga and epic documentation, Business Requirement Documents, Solution Design Documents, and business rules.
• Define, track, and report OKRs and KPIs related to user engagement, usability, and front-end performance, and engage business owners to ensure shared understanding of application and business metrics.
• Create and own user feedback mechanisms, and analyze user feedback and data to guide decisions and identify improvements.
• Ensure agency and contracted team members understand and complete assigned work.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, and prescription drug coverage.
• Flexible family care, parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, and subsidized back-up child care.
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members, and management leases.
• Tuition assistance.
• Established and active employee resource groups.
• Paid time off for individual and team community service.
• Paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level