VP, Head of Digital Product Engineering

dentsu•New York, NY

11d•$196,000 - $275,000•Remote

About The Position

Merkle is seeking an executive to lead the commercial growth, market strategy, and evolution of its Digital Product Engineering practice. The role focuses on helping clients solve complex business and technology challenges that commercially available platforms cannot fully address by creating custom digital products and experiences. It combines product thinking, custom engineering, cloud-native development, and applied AI to deliver measurable business value. This highly client-facing commercial leadership role involves building senior client relationships, identifying and shaping opportunities, leading product and technology solutioning, and growing existing accounts and new business. Approximately 50% to 70% of the role is externally focused on clients, market development, solutioning, and commercial growth. The remaining time is spent providing executive oversight of engagements, supporting practice direction, and promoting high-quality solutions. The position does not manage day-to-day delivery or have direct people-management responsibilities; instead, it leads through influence and partners with delivery and engineering leaders. The successful candidate will bring a career foundation close to engineering, followed by experience in product, consulting, and commercial leadership. They should be able to engage credibly in architecture and engineering discussions while leading strategic conversations with senior executives and product leaders. The position reports to the President, Digital Business Transformation. The role is open to candidates located in the United States. Candidates within 90 minutes of the New York, Michigan, California, or Illinois offices may be expected to work onsite three days per week; non-commutable candidates in the United States may work remotely. Approximately 30% to 50% travel is expected for client meetings, workshops, pitches, conferences, and team collaboration.

Requirements

Approximately 15 or more years of progressively responsible experience in product engineering, digital product development, software engineering, technology consulting, or related disciplines.
A career foundation in hands-on engineering, architecture, or technical delivery, followed by increasing responsibility in product, client, and commercial leadership.
Demonstrated success shaping and selling custom digital products, engineering solutions, or technology-enabled transformation programs.
Experience growing existing client relationships and supporting or leading new-business development.
Strong product leadership capabilities and credible experience and knowledge across software engineering and architecture.
Ability to lead product discovery, define value propositions, shape roadmaps, establish measurable outcomes, and translate ideas into executable solutions.
Experience with modern product-development practices, including discovery, experimentation, agile delivery, roadmapping, KPI definition, and outcome-based delivery.
Strong understanding of cloud-native development, composable architecture, full-stack engineering, DevOps, and custom application development.
Practical understanding of applied AI and how AI capabilities can be incorporated into client products, workflows, and experiences.
Experience using or directing AI-assisted software development, rapid prototyping, or comparable product-innovation methods.
Ability to engage credibly with CMOs, CIOs, CTOs, product executives, business leaders, and technical teams.
Experience working across multiple industries and quickly understanding new client environments and business models.
Proven ability to lead through influence across highly matrixed organizations, including guiding leaders of leaders.
Commercial acumen, including experience with revenue growth, margin, solution pricing, proposals, RFPs, pitches, and executive presentations.
Exceptional executive presence, communication skills, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and client relationship capabilities.
A portfolio of recent work from approximately the past 10 years demonstrating digital products, custom solutions, applications, websites, or other market-facing outcomes.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Product Management, Business, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
Willingness and ability to travel approximately 30% to 50%.
Must be authorized to work in the United States.

Responsibilities

Own the commercial growth strategy for the Digital Product Engineering practice, with accountability for revenue growth and margin performance.
Expand existing client relationships and help establish new client accounts and market opportunities.
Build trusted relationships with senior client executives across business, marketing, product, data, and technology organizations.
Lead executive-level discovery, product strategy, and solutioning conversations to uncover unmet needs and develop commercially viable opportunities.
Support pitches, proposals, RFPs, business cases, demonstrations, and other pre-sales activities.
Partner with account and growth leaders to bring Digital Product Engineering capabilities into broader dentsu and Merkle client relationships.
Represent the practice through executive conversations, conferences, thought leadership, and industry engagement.
Define differentiated product and engineering solutions for client needs not fully addressed by commercially available platforms.
Shape product visions, roadmaps, value propositions, and measurable success criteria using modern product-development practices.
Translate emerging technologies into practical, scalable products and services that create client value.
Lead the development of solutions using applied AI and help clients incorporate AI models and capabilities into digital products.
Use AI-assisted development, rapid prototyping, and experimentation to demonstrate possibilities and accelerate solution development.
Continuously explore technologies, product patterns, and methods for solving business problems.
Partner with product, engineering, architecture, strategy, creative, data, and delivery leaders to develop integrated solutions.
Serve as the commercial and go-to-market leader for the Digital Product Engineering practice.
Establish and communicate the practice's market position, capabilities, differentiators, offerings, and growth priorities.
Provide visible leadership and alignment across product, engineering, architecture, and delivery teams, operating as an influential leader of leaders without direct reporting relationships.
Partner with delivery leadership to ensure commercial commitments can be delivered successfully and profitably.
Provide executive oversight for active engagements, identify risks, remove barriers, and help teams navigate complex client environments.
Monitor delivery health, client satisfaction, revenue, margin, and account-expansion opportunities without managing day-to-day execution.
Build repeatable solution patterns, offerings, demonstrations, and points of view that improve the practice's ability to sell and scale.
Champion innovation, adaptability, critical thinking, continuous improvement, and client value.