Director of Product

Posted: September 19, 2024

Flexible Work Model:
We believe that the best way for us to grow, is through a work environment that allows us more flexibility whereby employees can be together in the office where interactions can happen with higher frequency and effectiveness (collaboration and team-engagement) – especially when dealing with complex problems and business innovation, balanced with work-from-home where we have more focused, uninterrupted time with minimal distractions for dedicated project/productive work.

Best Places to Work 2024:
GovDocs was named one of the 2024 Best Places to Work by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal! Being named an honoree was no easy feat, as they received over 300 nominations for this year’s award. GovDocs was one of the top-scoring Minnesota businesses honored in the medium company category (50-250 employees) for creating a fun, challenging, and rewarding workplace. Read more about GovDocs as Best Places to Work 2024 here: https://bizj.us/1qlh8s

Position Summary:
As Director of Product, you will be responsible for defining, differentiation and defensibility for current and future GovDocs Employment Law Compliance (ELC) products serving the Fortune 1000 market. You will develop a product strategy that aligns to the company vision, defining how each product will compete and win in the market. The right candidate will be able to manage the day-to-day product team function while working with the executive team and partnering with marketing, compliance, technology and nearly all areas of the business to design, distill and communicate the bets, hypotheses and business cases that will define our market position.

You will own and manage the qualitative client research function in the business, defining and prioritizing input from current customers as inputs into the product processes. For new products, you will be responsible for market and customer discovery, product concept creation and validation, business case creation and presentation and generating alignment across the company. The role requires experience in strategic thinking, building business cases and getting buy-in from the organization while building, scaling, and managing the product organization and team. The ideal candidate will have a strong client services acumen, coupled with high EQ and presentation skills. In addition, she or he will be organized, analytical, and embrace a disciplined and rigorous product development and launch process. This position reports to the Vice President of Growth with a strong dotted line to the CEO and founder.

Responsibilities:

• Build a point of view on differentiation and defensibility for all products in the company, defining what product attributes are ‘table stakes’ and what will define a successful market position
• Own market and customer discovery for new products, defining and validating winning positions in the market, produce pilot investment recommendations and gain buy-in from leadership across the company
• Lead and mentor a 3-person product team made up of product managers and a user experience designer in all aspects of the product management discipline to build, deliver, and continuously improve upon their product roadmaps.
• Maintain a high degree of communication across software engineering, client services, implementation, legal compliance, sales, and marketing departments to generate alignment and enthusiasm for the vision and objectives of the products and ELC platform.
• Develop and present product business plans, business cases, go-to-market plans, product positioning, product briefs, sales training, and competitive analysis.
• Define and drive product management processes as a discipline across the organization (from strategic planning to tactical activities).
• Implement best practices around story-writing, issue prioritization, and delivering complex features using an iterative, Minimum Marketable Feature approach.
• Work cross-functionally with internal departments to ensure seamless delivery of strategies within the lifecycle of existing products.
• Analyze industry trends in each target market segment.
• Develop a short and long-term portfolio strategy and portfolio roadmap.
• Perform ongoing competitive assessments by product line to ensure viability of products.
• Document and socialize business value of solutions to assist other areas of the organization in educating, marketing and supporting customers.
• Interact with various departments (Engineering, Legal Compliance, Marketing, Sales, Client Services) to understand, discover, and identify untapped product potential and use cases for existing products or new product opportunities.
• Participate in Agile development practices and proactively help the software engineering team understand the vision and requirements to ensure accurate implementation.
• Develop a deep understanding of our industry, including meeting directly with customers (from end users to key decision makers) to capture market requirements for new and existing products, ensuring a balance of product innovation and evolution.
• Get smarter at your job by reading books and blogs.
• Give credit to your team, more than to yourself.
• Ask why, a fair amount.
• Invent moments of silliness.
• Encourage curiosity.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years’ experience in SaaS product management, with at least 3 years at the Director level supporting a growth-oriented company (preferably with 15%+ CAGR over past 5 years).
• Experience working in fast-paced and iterative product development cycles, experience with continuous delivery and dual-track agile preferred.
• Certification and/or training through Pragmatic Marketing, Product Focus, Stage Gate or similar Product Management focused organization.
• Previous experience leading a team of 3 or more product managers.
• Demonstrated success in defining, implementing, and advocating effective product management processes, methods, and tools.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple mature product lines in a competitive market.
• Demonstrated ability to identify, plan and execute new product opportunities in existing verticals and new verticals.
• Experience presenting to and leading customer advisory councils/boards.
• Previous ownership of product strategies, road maps, release plans, requirements documents and go-to-market plans.
• Prior experience in building products on Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Salesforce Platform or Microsoft Azure.
• Familiarity with data architecture, database systems, and SQL is a plus.

Who You Are:

• You think about the voice of the customer and if our products are compelling to our customers.
• You wonder if we have made this product as easy to use as humanly possible.
• You ask if this product will succeed against not only today’s competition but future competition.
• You question if you know customers who will really buy the product.
• You consider if the product is truly differentiated and if you can explain the difference to an Executive in two minutes.
• You wonder how the product will roll up into the company’s larger strategy and a connected user experience platform.
• You question if the products’ strengths are consistent with what is important to the customers.
• You think about how much money the product is worth to our customers and if they could get it cheaper somewhere else.
• You worry about whether everyone on the Product Team clearly understands what product and processes they own and if they are accountable for the Product Management process.
• You wonder if everyone in the company understands the GovDocs’ product strategy and can articulate where we are going as a company.
• You ensure that you are gathering input and collaborating with leaders and departments across the company.
• You can think and plan long-term but execute in the short-term.
• You are assertive, proactive, and brave enough to put forth strategic product ideas for senior leadership to consider.
• You have a true love for great product design with the ability to empathize with customers and articulate their fears, pain-points, frustration, and anger.
• You lead by example and share your passion to inspire those around you for growth.
• You are authentic, driven and positive.
• You possess emotional intelligence and empathy. You have a good sense of humor, are self-aware and self-critical, but not arrogant.
• You handle interpersonal dynamics with grace.
• You do more than the minimum to achieve outstanding results by being hands-on and rolling up your sleeves now and again when it’s necessary.
• You thrive in a growth-oriented company by embracing and adapting to changes easily. You are open-minded and flexible.
• Your clear communication fosters understanding and collaboration.
• You express ideas effectively but are also an active listener.

Company Description:

GovDocs serves companies in building and executing their employment law compliance programs in two primary ways:

• Employment Law Posting Service: We manage all the complexities of identifying and providing the required set of employment law postings from the 1,700+ potential postings across the U.S. and Canada. Using proprietary technology, we allow companies to manage, track and verify postings at each of their locations – including our patent pending PosterCheck technology. Our Employment Law Posting Update service is used by almost 22% of the Fortune 500 and 30% of the Fortune 100.

• Employment Law Compliance Software Solutions: This is a first to market Software-as-a-Service starting with our Minimum Wage product and Paid Leave products, which allow companies to identify and track which laws apply to their locations and employees, then provides all relevant data to make decisions. This service was created in response to requests from some of our largest customers who recognized that employment law expansion across and variances between jurisdictions (Federal, State and Local) were too difficult to manually track.

GovDocs has grown revenue annually by 18% since 2008 with a 96% customer retention rate, primarily due to our Postings Update Program both obtaining and retaining customers – as employment law postings are required by law, every company has an existing provider. Our Software Solutions are an entirely new line of business that gives us great growth potential to create a full Employment Law Compliance (ELC) platform of solutions, it is also challenging us to reinvent how we view urgency, innovation and teamwork.

You must be authorized to work in the United States. Immigration or work visa sponsorship will not be provided. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.

Compensation: 

This position is critical to the success of our business and the compensation package will be commensurate with candidate’s experience and skills. This role will include a base salary and performance-based incentives.

Benefits include; paid vacation, paid volunteer time, paid holidays, medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, flexible spending account, health savings account, group life insurance, voluntary life insurance, group short-term disability, group long-term disability, critical illness insurance, accident insurance, hospital indemnity insurance, a matching 401(k), employee assistance programs, pet health insurance, and value-added programs.

Please send your resume, salary requirements and cover letter to careers@govdocs.com