Director of Product Management, Award Management

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Director of Product Management, Award Management based in United States.

The Director of Product Management, Award Management will lead the strategy and evolution of a critical B2B SaaS product portfolio supporting the sponsored research lifecycle.

This senior player-coach role combines product vision, portfolio strategy, team leadership, and hands-on customer discovery.

You will shape a multi-year roadmap spanning products that help research institutions plan, fund, and manage sponsored projects.

The role requires balancing customer needs, business objectives, technical investments, and long-term platform health.

You will work closely with engineering, sales, marketing, customer success, and executive stakeholders to drive alignment and execution.

The position also provides an opportunity to modernize platforms, strengthen product management practices, and influence solutions used across the research ecosystem.

Success will be measured through strategic clarity, strong product execution, team development, and meaningful customer and business outcomes.

Accountabilities:

• Own the product vision and multi-year roadmap for the Award Management suite, aligning priorities with broader business strategy and growth objectives.
• Build, lead, coach, and develop a team of product managers by establishing clear goals, supporting performance, and cultivating product leadership talent.
• Define and execute a multi-platform product strategy across the portfolio, sequencing investments according to the different stages of the sponsored project lifecycle.
• Partner with engineering leadership on platform migrations, product consolidations, and modernization initiatives, balancing near-term customer delivery with long-term platform health and scalability.
• Represent the Award Management strategy, roadmap, and priorities to executive leadership and key stakeholders, contributing to broader product and portfolio planning.
• Collaborate with sales, marketing, and customer success teams on packaging, pricing, go-to-market readiness, and commercialization strategies.
• Lead customer and market discovery with research institutions to validate strategic investments, understand emerging needs, and identify opportunities for product innovation.
• Champion Agile product management practices and establish consistent standards for high-quality execution across the team.
• Act as the voice of research administrators and institutional leaders, ensuring customer needs and market insights meaningfully influence product decisions.
• Serve as a connective leader across product, engineering, commercial, and customer-facing functions, creating alignment around priorities, dependencies, and outcomes.

Requirements

• 8+ years of B2B product management experience, including demonstrated experience leading and managing product managers.
• Proven success defining and executing product strategy across a multi-product or multi-platform portfolio within a B2B SaaS environment.
• Strong experience working in Agile environments with distributed, cross-functional teams.
• Hands-on experience with platform migrations, product consolidation, modernization, or similar transformation initiatives, with an understanding of their customer, commercial, and technical implications.
• Strong ability to prioritize roadmaps based on customer needs, business impact, strategic value, and technical feasibility.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous environments, making sound decisions with incomplete information, and building alignment across teams without direct authority.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and executive presentation skills, with the ability to lead both customer conversations and senior-level roadmap discussions.
• Experience in research administration, higher education, or grants and award management software is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with the sponsored project lifecycle, including proposals, awards, agreements, and financial compliance.
• Experience working in a private-equity-backed organization with ARR-oriented reporting expectations.
• Working fluency with AI tools for activities such as discovery synthesis, roadmap planning, competitive analysis, and product research.
• Strong strategic thinking, customer empathy, commercial awareness, and the ability to translate complex market and technical inputs into actionable product decisions.

Benefits

• Competitive medical benefits, including PPO and HSA options.
• Vision, dental, and short-term disability coverage fully paid by the employer.
• Unlimited PTO, company holidays, and a flexible work schedule.
• Remote work stipend to support an effective home-office environment.
• Equal paid parental leave.
• 401(k) plan with employer matching.
• Quarterly wellness reimbursement.
• Fully remote work environment with flexibility designed to support employee wellbeing and productivity.
• Opportunity to lead a strategically important product portfolio serving research institutions and the broader scientific research ecosystem.
• Senior-level exposure to executive leadership, cross-functional strategy, customer discovery, and multi-platform product transformation.