IT Product Manager

Ford Motor Company • Dearborn, MI

2d • $115,000 - $192,900

About The Position

The IT Product Manager owns and leads the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for user-facing applications, with an emphasis on user experience, functionality, cross-product integrations, and intuitive front-end solutions. Acting as the voice of the end user, the role ensures development aligns with user needs and delivers strong functionality and usability. The manager also ensures agency and contracted team members understand and complete their assigned work.

The role owns the product maps for the Global Safety and Ergonomics Tool (GSET) and Global Medical Employee Data (GMED). It leads UX and product design partnership, privacy processes for the health and safety PDO, front-end product development and delivery, stakeholder communications, and product documentation and measurement. It works closely with users, business partners, designers, engineers, architects, testing teams, suppliers, and project managers across discovery, delivery, testing, and release.

Ford offers medical, dental, and prescription drug coverage; family-care and parental-leave programs; vehicle discounts and management leases; tuition assistance; employee resource groups; paid community-service time; paid holidays; and paid time off with the option to purchase additional vacation time. The position is salary grade 8, with a stated 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 end-to-end product lifecycle ownership, 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 writing 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, including the ability to deliver 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 align feature delivery with organizational digital strategy and business viability.
• Passion for understanding user pain points and creating intuitive, frictionless digital experiences.

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 front-end product vision, strategy, and roadmaps aligned with organizational digital strategies.
• Conduct research, analysis, and industry trend analysis to identify opportunities and inform product decisions.
• Develop business cases for new features, sagas, or epics based on user desirability and business viability.
• Approve supplier-provided UX designs and own the end-to-end user experience.
• Lead and support a Product Designer through design leadership, mentorship, and first-level review of visual and interactive designs.
• Discover and frame user problems through stakeholder and user interviews, concept testing, and usability testing.
• Ideate, test, and iterate solutions through brainstorming, lean experiments, and direct user feedback.
• Lead and own the Ford Privacy process for the health and safety PDO.
• Oversee Ford Privacy setup, review, and approval for global and regional privacy requirements, and ensure regional and global reviewers and approvers are identified.
• Collaborate with engineers, developers, architects, and integrated services or sources on feasibility and design reviews.
• 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.
• Ensure user stories and tasks are identified and provided 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 in Gherkin format.
• Approve supplier-written sagas, epics, user stories, tasks, and test cases.
• Champion the Agile PDO methodology and participate in 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 ensure technical feasibility and user desirability.
• Lead and manage User Acceptance Testing and ensure product readiness for release from the user's perspective.
• Participate in QA testing led by the Testing Engineer.
• Foster cross-functional collaboration and communicate product strategy, roadmaps, and updates to stakeholders while managing expectations.
• 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.
• Engage business owners to ensure understanding of application and business OKRs and KPIs.
• Create and own user feedback mechanisms, and analyze feedback and data to inform product decisions and identify improvements.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, and prescription drug coverage.
• Flexible family care, parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, and subsidized backup childcare.
• 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.
• A generous schedule of 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: Senior