Industry Product Leader

Role Summary

The Industry Product Director owns industry strategy and commercialization for a major industry, addressing significant and unique issues that require judgment on market timing, regulatory shifts, and AI disruption. Working at the intersection of product, go-to-market, delivery, and customer success, the Industry Product Director translates industry needs into a portfolio of reusable product bets, AI-enabled workflows, and commercial priorities that drive adoption, expansion, and durable market differentiation. This role holds broad, authoritative expertise across the industry and its adjacencies, is recognized internally as the go-to voice on the vertical and leads a team of PM Builders.

This is a business-owner and people-manager role reporting to the Vertical PM Leader. The Industry Product Director acts independently to determine methods and procedures on new or special assignments, operates as a peer to GTM and delivery directors, and manages PM Builders, coordinating the work of more junior Industry PMs across the major industry or multiple sub-industries. The role creates formal networks across product, GTM, delivery, and customer success.

What this role owns — and what stays with Value Stream Product Managers

Owned by this role: industry strategy and commercialization for a major industry; P&L health, including pricing, packaging, and commercial-play strategy set with PMM; and the performance, development, and coaching of the PM Builders.

Remains with Value Stream Product Managers: day-to-day roadmap execution, feature-level prioritization, and product discovery within each value stream. This role aligns and sequences those decisions against the industry growth thesis; it does not replace them.

What You'll Do

Define the industry strategy and growth thesis

• Set the strategy. Set industry strategy and commercialization priorities across a major industry, resolving significant and unique issues such as market timing, regulatory shifts, and AI disruption.

• Turn complexity into value pools. Convert complexity across a major industry into clear value pools, sequencing, and measurable growth plans — with voice-of-customer input and validated customer pain points as the primary lens for what gets prioritized across your team.

• Bring an AI-aware lens. Define the industry's AI strategy — which workflows get AI, in what sequence, with what data and trust posture — and set standards for ROI evidence, governance, and customer-facing AI claims across your team.

Own the integrated industry roadmap and investment priorities

• Own the integrated roadmap. Own the integrated roadmap across a major industry, aligning investments to business impact and the customer pain points with the highest voice-of-customer signal.

• Prioritize AI and automation use cases. Set the sequencing and governance standards for AI, automation, and analytics use cases across your industry, in partnership with value-stream PMs, design, engineering, and data leaders.

• Track portfolio health. Monitor roadmap throughput, release adoption, and strategic goal attainment across your industry, including how well delivered items are resolving the customer pain points they were prioritized to solve.

Drive commercialization and customer engagement

• Shape packaging and positioning. Set pricing, packaging, and commercial-play strategy with PMM across your industry, driving margin and mix decisions, not just top-line growth.

• Lead customer and market feedback loops. Lead customer councils, executive discovery, and market feedback loops at the executive level across your industry, translating voice-of-customer input directly into roadmap prioritization decisions and surfacing the pain points most worth solving next.

Run the business review and own industry P&L

• Run the business review. Run the regular business review across your industry, tracking P&L health, margin and mix, and portfolio performance.

• Act as the executive integrator. Serve as the executive integrator across product, go-to-market, delivery, and customer success for your industry, operating as a peer to GTM and delivery directors.

• Own the P&L outcome. Own P&L health across the industry, setting pricing, packaging, and commercial-play strategy with PMM and driving margin and mix decisions.

Run discovery, experimentation, and instrumentation

• Own discovery and experimentation. Direct discovery, prioritization, experimentation, and instrumentation across your industry, ensuring voice-of-customer input and validated pain points drive what gets built.

• Define the technical building blocks. Guide pods and your team in defining the events, APIs, data models, prompts, evaluations, and guardrails required to execute on any functionality not covered in the value stream(s).

Build and lead the team

• Hire and develop your people. Hire, develop, and manage a team of PM Builders, setting goals, conducting performance reviews, and building succession plans.

• Set goals and growth paths. Set team goals aligned to industry and portfolio strategy and create development plans that grow PM Builders.

Who You'll Work With

Value Stream Product Managers, Pods, Product Operations Manager, Sales, Product Marketing, Product Enablement Manager, Customer Success, Professional Services and Partnerships. You will be the executive integrator who turns strategy into an aligned roadmap, go-to-market motion, and delivery plan across a major industry owning the commercial outcome as a peer to GTM and delivery directors while leading a team of PM Builders.

Qualifications

Required

• Typically 12+ years in product, industry solutions, general management, or portfolio leadership in software or SaaS, with a Bachelor's; or 8 years with a Master's; or equivalent.

• Multiple cycles of owning industry strategy and P&L outcomes, with demonstrated executive presence and customer-facing credibility.

• Broad, authoritative expertise across a major industry and its adjacencies; recognized internally as a go-to voice on the vertical.

• Demonstrated people-management experience at scale — managing a team of PM Builders goal-setting, performance management, and succession planning.

• A track record resolving significant and unique industry issues requiring evaluation of intangibles, such as market timing, regulatory shifts, and AI disruption.

Preferred

• Experience setting pricing, packaging, and commercial-play strategy with PMM, and driving margin and mix decisions.

• Experience operating as a peer to GTM and delivery directors.

• Experience coordinating the work of more junior Industry PMs as a Team Lead prior to formal people management.

How Success Is Measured

Performance is measured on a paired set of leading and outcome indicators across the role:

• Industry growth and P&L. Industry ARR and revenue growth, EBITDA and gross margin growth, and churn rate management.

• Customer and portfolio health. Expansion, retention, and win-rate improvement in the assigned industry; adoption of priority workflows and AI-enabled use cases; and time-to-value for lighthouse customers.

• Roadmap and execution alignment. Portfolio health — roadmap throughput, release adoption, and strategic goal attainment — strength of alignment between product roadmap, go-to-market motion, and delivery readiness, and evidence that prioritized roadmap items are resolving the voice-of-customer pain points they were selected to address.