F5 Product Manager 

United States, Washington, Seattle 

344742596

The Product Manager(PM) is a member of a product or solution team and is responsible for helping to drive the product strategy and requirements. A PM must be the market expert listening to customer and prospect needs, analyzing market dynamics, and setting product direction.

A PM manages the complete product lifecycle from definition and introduction to end-of-life. They must work collaboratively, driving strategic alignment within the organization, and have the ability to communicate effectively to both internal and external audiences. A PM develops requirements using a balance of future vision, near term opportunities, customer requirements, business acumen, and management of day-to-day product issues. The PM will engage with executives, channel, end users, and business partners. The position is dynamic and the individual must be comfortable with frequent multi-tasking among technical, business, strategic, marketing and planning activities.

Primary Responsibilities

• Engage with customers to understand their business objections, operational constraints, and specific needs / pain points
• Define overall vision and strategy for a product / solution, including target customer persona, customer value proposition, and business objectives
• Own Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), including product planning / concept definition, Minimum Viable Product (MVP) definition (when is an offering good enough for launch?), ongoing release strategy, and ultimately product retirement. Work with program management to drive the logistics of the PLM.
• Own creating and delivering against the business objectives for the product / solution
• Define capabilities and requirements for product / solution to align with overall vision and strategy; create and maintain a Market Requirement Documents (MRD) or equivalent, including a plan of Record (POR)/Roadmap
• Conduct market analyses and financial ROI analyses to inform product / solution roadmap and prioritize product backlog
• In collaboration with Sales, Marketing, Legal, Agile Product Owners, and many other stakeholders, drive decisions on backlog prioritization (e.g., customer expectations vs. engineering realities)
• Develop and deliver compelling product positioning with clear competitive differentiation and ROI to all audiences include executives, customers, partners and analysts.
• In collaboration with Product Marketing, Sales, Corporate Marketing, Partners, and Customers, develop overall go-to-market strategy and plan, including packaging, pricing, and positioning
• Create dashboards and metrics to monitor the performance of product / solution, based on pipeline, bookings, customers, etc.
• Build excitement for the overall F5 product strategy and portfolio and specific product / solution with customers, market analysts, and internal stakeholders with great communications, customer events and external presentations.
• Very high customer and partner engagement to receive feedback and handle escalations
• Overall accountability for the success of the product and business, creating internal visibility and business analysis for QBR’s and business reviews.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Strong customer orientation with the ability to listen, organize and champion key initiatives and projects for product development
• Strong written and oral communication skills, with ability to articulate complex technology clearly
• Flexible, self-motivated, team player
• Ability to work independently or lead others on projects
• Excellent leadership, negotiation & persuasion skills

• Duties are performed in a normal office environment while sitting at a desk or computer table.
• Duties may require working outside normal working hours (evenings and weekends).
• Duties may require the ability to travel via automobile or airplane, approximately 10-25% of the time spent traveling

Qualifications

• BA/BS degree in related field required, MBA a plus
• 8+ years of experience in technical product management or equivalent
• 3+ years relevant industry experience (enterprise networking, security, cloud services/products, IT operations
• 2+ years analyzing products, customers, and market dynamics a plus

The Job Description is intended to be a general representation of the responsibilities and requirements of the job. However, the description may not be all-inclusive, and responsibilities and requirements are subject to change.

The annual U.S. base pay range for this position is: $133,876.00 - $200,814.00