Senior Product Manager (2D)
About The Position
Cognex is a global industrial machine vision company that develops systems combining optics, image sensors, and artificial intelligence software. The company describes its culture as inclusive, equitable, dynamic, and guided by “Work Hard, Play Hard, Move Fast.” The work schedule is hybrid, with three days in the office and two days at home. The Senior Product Manager is an individual contributor who owns a product or significant product area end to end, with minimal guidance. The role partners with customers and cross-functional teams—including Sales, Customer Success, Engineering, Operations, and product leadership—to advance agentic AI capabilities from beta to general availability and shape multi-year roadmap decisions. The manager owns the full product lifecycle, from concept through commercial launch, sustained performance, and end of life, and is accountable for product scope, schedule, phase-gate readiness, and cross-functional alignment. The role develops product strategy and requirements grounded in customer input, market and competitive analysis, technical feasibility, and financial considerations. It owns the user experience vision for assigned products and validates design decisions with customers and field feedback. It also collaborates with Sales and Marketing Communications to create product and technical materials that support marketing and sales efforts.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree or relevant experience.
- At least 5 years of relevant experience in product management, product marketing, or a technical field.
- Experience with return-on-investment and pricing analyses, and understanding of financial tradeoffs in product decisions.
- Experience defining and launching AI/LLM-powered products or features, from vision and success metrics through commercial approach, including pricing, packaging, and go-to-market.
- Strong communication skills and experience with internal and external stakeholders, including senior managers and directors.
- Ability to synthesize customer, market, technical, and financial inputs into clear product perspectives and present strategies to senior audiences, adapting communication to technical and business audiences.
- Ability to influence business decisions and build credibility across Engineering, Sales, Operations, Management, and Executives.
- Strong understanding of the engineering phase-gate process.
- Ability to make fact-based product decisions, demonstrate customer empathy, and contribute to continuous improvement.
- English language proficiency.
- Willingness to travel overnight approximately 30%.
Nice To Haves
- Master’s degree.
- Experience with AI/LLM-powered assistants or agents.
Responsibilities
- Analyze competitor product portfolios and market positioning, and propose strategic responses for Cognex’s product roadmaps.
- Author market and product requirements documents (MRD/PRDs) based on validated voice of customer and competitive analysis.
- Align Sales and Engineering on market needs, feasibility, and investment direction before phase-gate entry; define priorities and scope to support focused engineering resource allocation.
- Partner with adjacent product teams to maintain coherent workflows, anticipate portfolio conflicts, and propose solutions.
- Own the user experience vision for assigned products, coordinating UI/UX priorities with Engineering and Industrial Design and validating decisions through customer testing, field trials, and post-launch feedback.
- Own products or major product areas from concept through commercial launch and sustained performance, managing scope, schedule, and cross-functional alignment.
- Define and prioritize customer problems worth solving, and make product decisions independently, escalating only when there is material ambiguity.
- Manage the product lifecycle through end of life, communicating and coordinating regularly with Sales, Engineering, and Operations and ensuring phase-gate readiness.
- Engage directly with customers to validate problems, workflows, and solution concepts; synthesize feedback into customer needs and requirements and distinguish anecdotal input from representative market signals.
- Collaborate with Sales and Marketing Communications to develop white papers, webinars, seminars, tradeshow materials, and reference guides.
- Define success metrics and use quantitative and qualitative data to validate hypotheses and prioritize.
- Present selected opportunities at phase-gate meetings.
Benefits
- Health insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401(k) retirement plan with company matching
- Employer-paid disability insurance
- Family leave
- Life insurance
- Paid time off, including holidays
- Optional voluntary benefits
- Recognition programs
- Wellness programs
- Annual bonus plan based on company and individual performance or sales incentive plan
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
