Director-Market Strategy & Product Management

Job Title: Director of Market Strategy & Product Management

Reports to: President, GPI

Job Summary: The Director, Market Strategy & Product Management is responsible for driving profitable growth by transforming customer, market, industry and competitive insights into winning strategies for the Pumps and FM&I (Flow Meter & Instrumentation) Divisions while managing a prioritized product portfolio roadmap for Great Plains Industries. This role will elevate the current Product Management team with a disciplined and customer-centric approach to identify opportunities, define strategy, and deliver profitable results. This role will also provide the project management skills necessary to execute the product portfolio strategy across the enterprise.

Job Details:

Market Strategy, Industry Intelligence & Segmentation

• Develop and maintain a fact-based understanding of priority industries, sectors, applications, market segments, customers, channels, competitors, regulations, technologies, and emerging trends.
• Lead market sizing and segmentation, including TAM, SAM, SOM, market share, growth rate, attractiveness, channel coverage, and right-to-win assessments.
• Translate market intelligence into recommended strategic choices, including where to play, how to win, and Protect, Grow, Enter, Harvest, or Exit decisions.
• Establish a consistent cadence for communicating market, industry, sector, and competitive intelligence to leadership and cross-functional teams.
• Identify attractive adjacencies, unmet needs, partnership opportunities, and acquisition targets that support enterprise and divisional growth strategies.

Voice of Customer & Customer Value

• Own and institutionalize the Voice of Customer process across the organization, including customer interviews, field observation, advisory discussions, surveys, and channel feedback.
• Ensure customer needs, applications, pain points, buying criteria, willingness to pay, and Jobs-to-Be-Done are documented, validated, prioritized, and translated into clear market and product requirements.
• Develop customer and application insights for both the Pump and Flow Meter & Instrumentation portfolios, including cross-selling and combined-solution opportunities.
• Create a closed-loop process that communicates what was learned, what actions will be taken, and how customer impact will be measured.

Product Roadmap & Product Management

• Own the enterprise product roadmap and facilitate multi-year divisional roadmaps aligned with strategy, customer needs, technology priorities, financial objectives, and resource capacity.
• Lead product management from opportunity identification through business case, development, commercialization, lifecycle management, and product retirement.
• Define market requirements, target customer, application, value proposition, positioning, competitive differentiation, pricing logic, channel strategy, launch requirements, and success measures for product initiatives.
• Partner with Engineering and Operations to prioritize roadmap investments and balance breakthrough innovation, platform development, product extensions, sustaining work, compliance, and cost reduction.
• Provide market-based recommendations at NPD stage gates and confirm that investment decisions remain supported by validated customer value and commercial potential.

Project Management & Execution

• Establish the Project Management team and establish consistent project governance, planning, prioritization, execution, and reporting practices across strategic and product-development initiatives.
• Ensure projects have clear scope, objectives, business ownership, deliverables, milestones, resource plans, decision rights, risks, dependencies, budgets, and success measures before execution.
• Partner with functional leaders to prioritize projects based on strategic alignment, customer value, financial return, risk, resource capacity, and organizational readiness.
• Develop project management capability, standard work, tools, and stage-gate discipline while tailoring the level of governance to project size, risk, and complexity.

Market and Value-Based Pricing

• Lead market- and value-based pricing strategy using customer value, application economics, competitive position, differentiation, willingness to pay, channel requirements, and profitability.
• Establish pricing architecture, value metrics, price corridors, discount guidance, and governance in partnership with Sales and Finance.
• Evaluate price realization, margin performance, mix, leakage, competitive response, and customer outcomes; recommend corrective actions and pricing opportunities.
• Ensure value propositions and commercial tools clearly connect product capabilities to measurable customer benefits and economic value.

Portfolio Optimization & Lifecycle Management

• Lead recurring portfolio reviews using revenue, growth, gross margin, market share, strategic fit, customer relevance, complexity, quality, service requirements, lifecycle stage, and return on investment.
• Recommend investment, repositioning, bundling, platforming, SKU rationalization, discontinuation, and exit actions to improve portfolio growth and profitability.
• Develop and maintain product lifecycle strategies, including launch, growth, maturity, harvest, replacement, and end-of-life plans.
• Partner with Finance and Operations to quantify the economic impact of portfolio decisions and reduce low-value complexity.

Commercialization & Business Performance

• Lead development of business cases for new products, markets, applications, pricing actions, and portfolio investments, including revenue, margin, cost, risk, timing, and adoption assumptions.
• Partner with Sales and Marketing to develop go-to-market plans, launch readiness, sales enablement, demand generation, channel activation, and customer adoption plans.
• Establish and monitor product and market performance dashboards; identify gaps and lead cross-functional corrective action.
• Support annual strategy deployment, budgeting, forecasting, acquisition diligence, and investment prioritization with market and portfolio analysis.

Leadership & Organizational Capability

• Build, lead, coach, and develop high-performing Product Management and Project Management teams with clear roles, priorities, standards, development plans, and accountability.
• Create strong cross-functional alignment and facilitate decisions where customer value, market opportunity, technical feasibility, operational capability, and financial return must be balanced.
• Represent the company with customers, channel partners, industry associations, trade shows, and external research partners as appropriate.
• It is the responsibility of all GPI employees to:

• comply with all Safety requirements of the position and the facility.
• follow the policies outlined in the Employee handbook and the posted Work Rules for GPI and behave in an ethical manner.

• This Job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities of the employee. The employee may be assigned other responsibilities as required of the position.

Supervisory Responsibilities: Product Management Team, Project Management process and team

Job Qualifications:

Required

• Proven experience developing market intelligence and translating to a profitable product road map in similar industry.
• Prior successful experience developing world class Product Management teams.
• Strong Project Management skills including developing project execution processes and employee development needs.
• Prior success with identifying acquisition targets that enhance organization market strategy.
• Demonstrated skillful utilization of market tools to develop profitable growth strategies.
• Strong ability to successfully manage, develop and lead employees within functional areas.
• Demonstrated success in leading cross function teams to meet organizational objectives.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Degree in Engineering, Bachelor of Business or similar field of study. Successful work experience considered in leu of degree.

Preferred

• Master level education or demonstrated business acumen.
• Proven ability to work in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated personal motivation with a focus to complete assigned goals.

Job Requirements:

Physical:

• Ability lift up to 20lbs