Senior Director, Platform Strategy

Medallia•Mclean, VA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Medallia is seeking an experienced product and platform strategy leader to serve as Senior Director of Platform Strategy within its Product organization. As Medallia builds toward its next-generation platform architecture, this role operationalizes the strategic thread that ties everything together: a clear, sequenced roadmap for what gets released and when, built in lockstep with business targets and grounded in the realities of the global enterprise customer base. A defining part of the job is designing and leading the strategy for how existing enterprise customers gradually adopt next-generation platform capabilities — the adoption journey — including how that story is communicated, sequenced, and de-risked, always grounded in Medallia's broader business and financial goals. The role is responsible for establishing the reporting structure and cadence needed to keep the Executive Leadership Team and the Board aligned on this process. The Senior Director will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Finance/GTM, Product Marketing, Sales, Sales Engineering, and Professional Services, translating a complex, multi-year platform evolution into a roadmap and narrative that leadership, the board, and customers can all align around.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in a science, engineering, or related quantitative field, or equivalent experience.
12+ years of enterprise SaaS product and/or R&D experience, including meaningful exposure to platform strategy, architecture evolution, or infrastructure-level product work.
Demonstrated experience owning and communicating a multi-year platform or technology roadmap to senior executives and/or a board.
Demonstrated experience leading a large-scale technology or architecture evolution for an enterprise customer base, including phased rollout planning and change management.
Demonstrated experience aligning technical roadmaps with revenue goals, growth targets, and go-to-market commitments.
Demonstrated experience driving cross-functional initiatives and managing dependencies across product, engineering, sales, sales engineering, product marketing, and professional services functions at a portfolio level.
3+ years of direct people-management experience leading product managers or cross-functional product teams, including hiring, coaching, and developing a team.
Ability to maintain a flexible working schedule that accommodates recurring real-time collaboration, cross-functional syncs, and executive/board reviews across globally distributed teams.

Nice To Haves

Comfort operating in a role whose scope and team structure may evolve over time, with the flexibility to work hands-on while also building and leading a team as needed.
Hands-on, prototype-driven approach: comfortable using AI-assisted tooling to validate concepts quickly, accelerate roadmap definition, and constructively challenge engineering estimates.
Experience building customer advocacy, early-adopter/beta, or reference programs for enterprise software.
Experience with a Customer Experience Management platform.
Experience in an agile development environment and familiarity with tools such as Productboard and JIRA.

Responsibilities

Drive the strategic roadmap for Medallia's next-generation platform, defining what is released and when in close coordination with Engineering and Architecture leadership.
Align roadmap sequencing tightly with business targets — revenue commitments, growth goals, and go-to-market strategy — partnering with Sales, Finance, and GTM leadership to keep the two in lockstep.
Coordinate across the broader product portfolio to surface and manage cross-team and cross-product dependencies that affect sequencing and release timing.
Design and lead the strategy for enterprise customers' gradual adoption of next-generation platform capabilities — defining phases, customer segmentation, risk mitigation, and success metrics for a global enterprise customer base, grounded in Medallia's business and financial goals — and establish the reporting structure that keeps the Executive Leadership Team and the Board aligned on this progress.
Design and run an early-adopter program for next-generation platform capabilities, recruiting strategic enterprise customers to pilot new functionality, and cultivate a base of references and champions who can speak to the value of the platform's evolution, partnering with Product Marketing on case studies and testimonials.
Own the customer-facing communication strategy for the adoption journey, from early access through broad rollout, partnering with Sales, Sales Engineering, Product Marketing, and Professional Services to build excitement and ensure the customer base moves toward broad adoption together.