Product Development Manager
About The Position
At i3, we build real products for real clients, and getting it right takes more than someone who can run a schedule. It takes someone who can hold the product vision, manage the client relationship, and lead a team of engineers all at once, even when the path forward isn't fully mapped out yet. This role is best suited to someone who enjoys working through ambiguity and staying close to the technical work. To be honest, you may not walk into a project with a fully defined scope or finalized requirements. Part of the job is helping the client and the team figure that out together. You'll be balancing competing priorities, questioning assumptions, and taking ownership when the next step isn't obvious. This is a good fit if you want to help build products, not just manage schedules. Someone looking for a primarily coordination-focused role will likely find this position broader and more hands on than expected.
Requirements
- 5+ years of product development experience preferred
- Experience leading multi-disciplinary engineering projects
- Experience coaching and mentoring team members
- Comfortable presenting, whether it's a client meeting or an internal design review
- A solid understanding of electro-mechanical systems and connected products is a big plus
- PMP certification is a plus though this role also requires strong product judgement, client leadership, and comfort with ambiguity.
Nice To Haves
- A bachelor’s degree in engineering, technology, design, business, or a related discipline is preferred.
- We are more interested in the relevance of your experience than in the exact title of your degree.
- Successful candidates will have experience working with technical teams and leading products, programs, or client engagements through ambiguous and evolving development work.
Responsibilities
- Understand the client's business, their customers and what they're really trying to build - not just what they wrote in the request for proposal
- Help shape the product vision alongside the client, not just take notes on it
- Turn ambiguity into a workable plan
- Push back on assumptions and figure out what the team or client needs next
- Lead and energize a team spanning software, mechanical, electrical, firmware, and design
- Manage scope, budget, cross-functional coordination, risk, and client expectations
- Stay close enough to the work that you catch gaps early
- Know what needs to be built and who's best suited to build it. Sometimes that's you, more often it's someone on your team
- Have led development work where the answer wasn't handed to you
- Think about the product, the customer, and the business, not just the task list
- Can hold your own with technical teams without needing to be the smartest person in the room
- Create clarity on your own instead of waiting for someone to hand it to you
- Can manage scope, schedule, budget, and risk without losing sight of why the product matters
- Enjoy both building and coordinating
- Can shift how you lead depending on whether you're working with
- Can manage more than one project at a time shifting focus often
- Take responsibility when things don’t go according to plan
- Enjoy and thrive in variety and learning new things – projects and clients start and finish often and each day is not the same
Benefits
- Health insurance with a zero-dollar deductible and employee premiums as low as nine dollars per pay period
- Dental and vision coverage
- 401(k) with dollar-for-dollar match up to six percent
- Employee Stock Purchase Program
- Company-paid short- and long-term disability insurance
- Company-paid life insurance at two times annual salary
- Flexible Spending Account
- Health Savings Account
- Paid time off
- Paid holidays
- Emergency Assistance Fund
- Charitable Match Program
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
