Product Manager (Automotive)

About Nextbase

Nextbase is a market leader in connected car technology and driving intelligence. Founded in the UK in 1999, we have 25 years' experience of manufacturing in-car devices and protection platforms, and, to this day, our sole focus is on driver wellbeing and safety. Ours is the largest smart Dash Cam brand in the world and we hold leading market share in our active markets.

Location: Blackfriars, London with travel to Caerphilly, Wales as required

Main Purpose of your Job

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Product Manager to guide the implementation and overall commercial success of our Automotive products and services to address specific business, customer, experience, and market needs of our Vehicle Manufacturer partners. The product manager's role is strategic and involves envisioning, planning, and executing the development and launch of products. They are responsible for the success of their product and are accountable for ensuring it aligns with the company's overall mission, growth, market and P&L goals.

This role will be responsible for the gathering and articulation of product strategy, requirements, differentiation and roadmap along with the definition of a clear customer experience plan and acceptance criteria of product features and functionality. Work closely with cross-functional development teams, to ensure the delivery of high-quality technology enabled products.

The product manager will be responsible for the creation and maintenance of comprehensive product documentation associated to PDLC process. Further, the product manager will create and manage the overall product business and performance plan, driving to growth, market & P&L objectives, while ensuring differentiation against named competitors, leading the market in customer reviews and dazzling the customer with the leading end to end customer experience.

The product manager will work with stakeholders to create a performance management plan for the product, inclusive of KPIs, which are reported and leveraged for continuous improvement, roadmap and market leadership. You will be responsible for keeping up to date with market trends, technologies, identifying opportunities and applying them to our new and existing product lines.

Ideally you will have a strong business acumen, a technical background with unerring customer passion and be able to demonstrate a track record of driving squads, using agile methodologies and techniques with relentless focus on customer experience.

For this role you will be required to work through trade-offs and prioritization of features and backlog, lead scrums with marketing, sales, engineering teams to drive the right short and long-term strategic decisions and priorities for the program, business, and customers. Experience in Android and iOS application development, with the ability define features requirements, user journeys/stories, and support the GTM process.

Main Responsibilities

• Understanding customer needs: Researching markets to identify opportunities and needs, and becoming familiar with user and buyer personas
• Product strategy: Lead the product's strategy and vision, and ensure it aligns with the company's goals
• Product development: Manage the product's development and launch, from planning to execution
• Product execution: Gathering and defining requirements, set MVP scope based on data and business needs, identify and priorities product features, define acceptance criteria, manage product scrums, support the GTM process, internal and external product briefings.
• Product lifecycle: Drive the execution of all processes in the product lifecycle, including research, planning, positioning, and roadmap development
• Product requirements: Identify product requirements and priorities by collecting and analyzing user feedback
• Product performance: Report on product performance and user feedback, and implement changes as needed
• Cross-functional collaboration: Serve as a liaison between sales, technology, and design teams
• Product vision: Define a vision for the product
• Product evolution: Think about how the product should evolve to meet the market needs
• Customer experience: Define the end-to-end customer experience and execute a continuous effort to delight the customer and demonstrate clear and leading differentiation over named competitive choices.

Skills and experience

• A technical background with a bachelor's degree in engineering or business-related discipline
• 5+ years of experience in product management
• Knowledge of every aspect of the product development life cycle
• Customer/user centric approach
• Demonstrated experience bridging digital and physical products in automotive
• Proven ability to translate customer insights into successful products with measurable impact, effectively communicating requirements across teams
• Track record of delivering complex products on time and within budget, navigating manufacturing and supply chain challenges
• Skilled at balancing innovation with feasibility, making trade-off decisions that prioritise customer needs whilst meeting technical requirements
• Experience in the automotive sector
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Proven ability to manage and supervise multidisciplinary and cross-functional teams
• Ability to create product development strategies and roadmaps
• Strong leadership and project management skills
• In-depth knowledge about the consumer electronics industry and markets
• Ability to analyze complex data to identify market trends and customers’ behaviour
• Experience with agile and scrum practices
• Excellent verbal and written communication
• An ability to build effective relationships and possess, with a flexible and collaborative approach
• Strong credentials in Product Governance, setting up and operating end-to-end governance processes and reporting across internal and external stakeholders

Ways to stand out from the crowd

• Demonstrated track record of learning, leading and winning.
• Experience in delivery of consumer electronic projects (software and hardware)/dash cams
• Experience with consumer connected products that have subscription-based platform
• Managed the development of the connected features, created the digital product proposition and defined specifications for connected products that met both business and user needs
• Experience in application development based on Android and iOS
• SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (SAFe, POPM)
• Certified Professional Scrum Master (PSM)
• Six Sigma-certification
• PMP certification
• Business transformation experience
• Experience in a senior or leadership role
• JIRA experience