Director of Product Development

The Jon Renau Director of Product Development oversees the entire lifecycle of the company’s products ensuring a seamless transition from conception to launch; responsible for driving innovation, managing the product lifecycle, ensuring our products meet market demands & customer expectations while aligning with business goals.

• Strategize, plan, and execute initiatives to bring innovative products to market. 
• Sets the direction and goals for the product portfolio, aligning them with the business objectives and customer needs. 
• Define the product vision, roadmap, and value proposition, and communicate them clearly and persuasively to internal and external stakeholders. 
• Guide product design, development, and testing phases, ensuring alignment with business goals 
• Market analysis, identifying customer needs, and collaborating with cross-functional teams. 
• Monitor market trends, competitors, and feedback and adjust the strategy accordingly
• Manage timelines, budgets, and risk mitigation, identifying challenges & implementing solutions throughout the product process
• Fosters a cohesive work environment, liaise with stakeholders
• Fosters transparent communication, manage stakeholder expectations, providing realistic timelines and addressing concerns.
• Serves a crucial role in stakeholder management, handling relationships and expectations from internal and external parties
• Oversees the execution and delivery of the product development process, ensuring that it follows the best practices and standards. 
• Manage the product backlog, prioritize the features, and allocate the resources.
• Collaborate with the design, quality assurance, and marketing teams, and provide guidance and feedback throughout the development cycle. 
• Measure and evaluate the product performance, quality, and user satisfaction, and identify areas for improvement.

Team Management: 

• Sets the tone for a creative and forward-thinking approach, empowering the product development team to push boundaries and iterate on concepts to suit customers
• Championing innovation, they ensure the team remains agile and adaptable to changing market dynamics. 
• Responsible for driving innovation and experimentation within the team. 
• Inspire a culture of curiosity and risk-taking, urging team members to explore novel ideas and test hypotheses. 
• Encourage a mindset of continuous learning, provides resources and support for experimentation, fostering an environment where failure is viewed as a valuable learning experience. 
• Create a framework and environment for generating, validating, and prototyping new concepts, and support the team in conducting user research, market analysis, and data-driven experiments. 
• Facilitate the learning and sharing of insights and best practices from the experiments, and promote a culture of continuous improvement and learning.
• leads and mentors the product team, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and customer-centricity. 
• Hire, train, and develop the product managers, designers, and empower them to make decisions and solve problems.
• Set the expectations, roles, and responsibilities for the team, and provide regular feedback, recognition and performance management. 
• Resolve any conflicts or issues that arise within or across the teams.

Skills, Knowledge & Abilities

• A director of product development is expected to have a combination of technical, business, and leadership skills, as well as relevant experience and qualifications. 
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in business, or a related field with at least 5-10 years of experience in product management, preferably in a senior or leadership role. 
• Proven track record of delivering successful and impactful products from ideation to launch and beyond. 
• Knowledge of the product development methodologies, tools, and best practices such as agile, scrum, lean, design thinking is essential. 
• Solid knowledge of the market, customer, and competitor trends and be able to translate them into product opportunities and solutions. 
• Analytical, problem-solving, decision-making skills are required along with the ability to use data and metrics to inform and validate product decisions. 
• Communication, presentation, persuasion skills are also necessary for articulating and aligning the product vision, strategy, and value proposition to various audiences. 
• Exceptional leadership, management, mentoring skills. 
• Reputation for inspiring, motivating, and empowering your product team and stakeholders. 
• A creative mindset with the ability to generate new ideas and concepts is also essential.