flex Senior Manager, MDS Product Platform Strategy

Marriott Hotels Resorts•Bethesda, MD

About The Position

This is a temporary position. Marriott Digital Services (MDS) operates as an agency within Global Digital, delivering digital products that enhance hotel engagement with guests and drive room nights. This role oversees the strategic integration of MDS products based on Adobe Experience Manager and related platforms, ensuring alignment between business needs and technical roadmaps. Responsibilities include coordinating with internal and external stakeholders, identifying dependencies, streamlining processes, and facilitating communication from strategy through delivery. The position leverages generative AI tools to support analysis, decision-making, and stakeholder communications. Working cross-functionally, the Sr. Manager will develop and implement strategic platform and product roadmaps, manage execution and reporting, and ensure projects are delivered on time, within budget, and according to KPIs and SLAs. In this role, you'll operate by connecting MDS with enterprise platforms and product teams, staying up to date on upstream decisions and understanding their downstream consequences. You'll focus on aligning priorities and roadmaps, ensuring MDS business needs are integrated into technical plans through transparent processes. Orchestrating strategy and delivery will be essential, as you lead cross-team initiatives, oversee vendors, and effectively track key performance indicators. Success within six to twelve months will be measured by having MDS priorities reflected in upcoming releases, experiencing fewer dependency delays, seeing AI-generated summaries speed up cycles, and observing increased stakeholder satisfaction. Your operating cadence will include monthly reviews of dependencies, pre-PI alignment sessions, and consistent roadmap syncs with the enterprise Technical Lead, MDS scrum master and MDS Product owners.

Requirements

6+ years of experience in digital product management and enterprise platform integration, or related background.
Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, or a related field or equivalent combination of education and experience
Proven ability to collaborate with multiple product teams, identify dependencies, risks, and opportunities impacting MDS products and programs, and facilitate timely mitigation and alignment within established timelines.
Experience integrating business priorities into actionable product and technical roadmaps; worked with enterprise Technical Leads or architecture teams to align scope, sequencing, and trade?offs.
Fluency in Generative AI tools, including Microsoft Copilot, with hands?on use of AI to augment research, requirements, communications, backlog refinement, and portfolio reporting.
Product and portfolio operations: dependency management, impact assessment, issue escalation, and standard processes such as release planning, PI Planning, design reviews, and QBRs.
Skilled in managing vendors, SLAs, and capacity planning.
Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to facilitate alignment among business owners, designers, engineers, and platform teams across MDS Product Development, Global Client Services, MDS Business Support, and Digital Shared Services/Digital Engineering.
Metrics?driven mindset with experience defining and reporting KPIs/OKRs tied to value realization, adoption, modernization, and cost recovery.

Nice To Haves

Background in platform product management or enterprise platform governance.
Proficiency with Adobe Experience Manager and headless content management architecture.
Experience codifying AI usage guidelines, prompt patterns, and quality controls within product workflows.
Knowledge of compliance, risk, and data stewardship as they relate to digital product orchestration in a large enterprise.

Responsibilities

Manages internal and external operations resources, and aids in resource planning for current and future projects.
Manages current vendor partnerships across products and projects, including changes in resourcing needs, billing, and SLAs.
Oversees the development of project workflows for current and new initiatives and products.
Responsible for schedules and status for all MDS on-platform projects, and reports updates as needed to internal and external stakeholders.
Employs a laser focus on scalability and cost recovery when launching new and revising existing new products/projects and strategies.
Manages MDS Product on-platfom roadmap and specific goals to prioritize, organize, and accomplish objectives.
Contributes to annual budgeting and forecasting; responsible for vendor and resource volume estimates and projections.
Participates in resource staffing activities, contributes to staffing models as needed.
Works cross functionally with MDS Product Development, Global Client Services and MDS Business Support teams and Digital Shared Service teams and Digital Engineering resources to align workflows, deliverables and project roles.
Provides insights on implications of existing tools and new platforms from an operational perspective and suggests improvements that will increase speed to market and efficiencies in workflow.
Works regularly with vendors and agencies to leverage capabilities and extend scale to execute MDS projects.
Partners with MDS Business Support team to ensure proper and accurate billing between MDS projects and external vendors; audits and analyzes statements as needed.
Represents MDS Products across the larger Enterprise and Digital Products organization.
Ensures effective client communication
Schedules and leads all client calls.
Collects specific information from clients regarding needs and expectations, answers questions about the process.
Confirms and align project scope through a formal Statement of Work.
Ensures appropriate documentation is delivered throughout program engagement.
Monitors the impact of the program versus goals and proactively communicates with clients about need for changes in strategic direction.
Manages deliverables within expected timelines
Coordinates with operations team, paid media teams and vendors to guarantee all deliverables are executed on time.
Reviews all client deliverables to ensure that they are on strategy and meet quality expectations.
Establishes digital key performance indicators (KPIs).
Makes strategic recommendations for additional services/tactics to enhance program to meet goals.
Engages in frequent, active engagement with corporate Digital team(s) to ensure alignment, pull-through, and two-way communication about the status, performance, opportunities, and issues related to digital programs and initiatives.
Managing Team
Directs relevant project work and priorities of contractors, and vendors as needed.
Establish priorities for executing work across all applicable programs, stages, etc. and monitors bandwidth of team across projects.
Monitors the work of contractors and vendor teams to ensure it is completed on time and meets expectations.
Facilitates hiring activities and new associate onboarding/training as needed.
Represents team in resolving situations.
Manages the flow of questions and directs questions.
Owning Relationships
Works cross functionally with new and existing corporate teams and relationships to advance scalability and operational efficiencies.
Identifies and builds new cross functional partnerships and relationships with Marriott Digital, Engineering, and other teams. Builds mutually beneficial relationships to advance scalable solutions for hotels.
Project & Process Management
Manages and tracks project workflows and schedules in project management tools (Jira, etc.) as needed to reflect needs of ever-evolving processes.
Proactively reviews project workflow and process, advances revisions to improve execution efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Procures access to necessary project management tools and resources for vendors and contractors.
Meets changes to business priorities and strategies by determining impacted areas, processes with problem-solution mindset.
Works across Operations to put sustainable work processes and systems in place that support the execution of the strategy.
Measurement and Accountability
Regularly reviews and refines processes and quality of work standards in partnership to ensure all projects continue to support overarching Marriott Digital strategies, goals and SLAs.
Contributes to monthly MDS status deck by providing data and analysis on project status, timelines, wins and challenges. Provides Analysis and context to educate and inform executive stakeholders on project status and direction.
Holds vendors accountable; provides actionable recommendations for change and develops vendor improvement plan should vendor not execute work to MDS standards.
Collaborates with proxy agencies to ensure MDS Products projects meet quality and workflow standards, and SLA expectations.
Revises process for vendors, Operations and external teams as needed.
Establishes and maintains complete and up-to-date information to ensure accurate reporting.
Vendor Management
Manages agency/vendor participation across projects in order to meet quality and workflow standards, and SLA expectations.
Manages vendor training, documentation, and billing.
Manages vendor relationships and development of vendor KPI scorecards.
Demonstrating and Applying Discipline Knowledge
Serves as Marriott product SME (Subject Matter Expert) to MDS associates, answers questions, trains and supports team as needed.
On-boards and manages new related vendors and agencies, to bring additional scale and capabilities to MDS, serves as main point of contact.
Manages development of training plans and project documentation, partnering with MDS Customer Success team as necessary.
Partners with external Marriott teams on project deliverable status and process. Leads efforts to streamline and create increased efficiencies between teams.
Additional Responsibilities
Contributes posts to MDS blog, client newsletter and/or client educational webinars.
Oversees billing and invoice processing on behalf of MDS AEM Products, partners with Business Support team as needed.
Continual education and self-growth through reading industry blogs, social media, white papers, cases studies, research briefs, etc.
Attends relevant industry conferences, training and seminars.
Performs other reasonable duties, such as special projects, as assigned by manager and MDS Leadership Team.
Presents ideas, expectations and information in a concise, organized manner.
Uses problem solving methodology for decision making and follow up.
Maintains positive working relations with direct reports, department managers, and external teams.
Manages time effectively and conducts activities in an organized manner.
Informs, updates, and provides information to supervisors, co-workers, and subordinates by telephone, in written form, e-mail, or in person in a timely manner.
Manages and implements work and projects as assigned.
Generates and provides accurate and timely results in the form of reports, presentations, etc.
Analyzes information and evaluates results to choose the best solution and solve problems.
Provides timely, accurate, and detailed status reports as requested.