Senior Product Manager

Highland is looking for a Senior Product Manager who loves working with multi-disciplinary design and development teams to help good organizations create new digital products and experiences.

About Highland

Highland is a digital product and innovation consultancy based in Chicago. We research, design, and build digital products and experiences for mission-driven organizations and customer-centric companies.

Our mission is to increase human flourishing through game changing insights, design and--when appropriate--digital products and platforms. Our work tends to focus on organizations contributing to peoples physical and mental health, social connections, community, and financial stability.

The continued growth of our work in Design Research, Innovation, and Digital Strategy has brought Highland to an inflection point. Our early stage research, strategy, and innovation work has more than tripled in the last two years creating increased opportunity to deliver on the value of those insights through digital products and experiences. We believe in the power of the end-to-end design using an integrated approach with consistent team members from research, design, and development, all coherently focused on user behaviors and needs.

About the role

The Senior Product Manager is responsible for developing trust and rapport with clients from pre-sale through project completion, and gaining deep knowledge of the client, their business, and their project to ensure we provide the highest level of service. The ideal candidate will lead their team by creating the effective communication structures, project organization and trust that successful projects require. The role requires a dynamic balance of technical experience along with leadership ability. The Senior Product Manager will set product direction, define work for researchers, designers, and developers, provide projections, and track project progress and budgets.

Here is what we think is true of the person who would thrive in this role:

Product Management Expertise

• You have been instrumental in shaping and building new digital products that meet customer needs and align to organizational goals.
• You collaborate with researchers, designers, and developers in aligning around product opportunity and business strategy.
• You understand and speak to business outcomes, and have shaped human-centered products where you were accountable for specific business objectives like revenue, customer acquisition, incremental profitability, etc.
• You have direct experience with full stops and hard pivots, and are able to take action when concepts and products arent working.
• Youre familiar with agile methods as well as development and design processes.
• You create strategic roadmaps grounded in customer and business opportunities over features.
• You can articulate product needs and requirements at several levels of detail, from team-focused user stories and acceptance criteria up to client-facing objectives and roadmaps.

Client Leadership

• You advise and consult with client leaders on product strategy and product development.
• Youre focused on the end goal as well as the right next step.
• You seek frank, honest conversations with clients and team members alike.
• Youre a clear and compelling communicator, regardless of medium.

Project Management Expertise

• You manage and facilitate ongoing project and team cadences.
• You proactively communicate progress, risks and budget updates to Highland Directors and client leadership.
• You engage and leverage design and development leadership on your project team to align on decisions and drive outcomes.
• You ensure that all time tracking and billing activities for the team are completed in a timely fashion.
• You replace ineffective practices with ones that better accomplish project and company goals.