Technical Product Manager (Platform Team)

Protolabs•Minnesota, MN

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

Be yourself at Protolabs Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification.  We are an equal opportunity employer, and we are committed to building a diverse team that feels they are valued in the workplace.  So do you feel you do not meet every single requirement but still intrigued? We encourage you to still apply!  You can help make our company even better.  We do not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, age, mental or physical ability, or any way you represent yourself.  We strongly believe diversity makes for more successful teams. Why Protolabs? We are the leaders in digital manufacturing. We hire doers, makers, and creative thinkers who tackle our roles with an entrepreneurial spirit. Our culture is centered around meaningful work that brings new and innovative products to market at unprecedented speeds. We are a diverse team that comes from all walks of life and take pride in our team who is smart, genuine, humble, and passionate about what we do. It’s our people who fuel our creativity and make our culture feel like home. We are looking for a Technical Product Manager to join our team. This is a fixed hybrid role on-site Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at HQ in Maple Plain MN The Technical Product Manager for Platform Engineering treats platform capabilities and internal developer tooling as products. They work closely with platform engineers, operations, and security to enable product teams to provide software solutions that are aligned with the company’s strategy and market needs. TPMs bridge technical and business objectives, planning and driving the product development process from conception to launch by removing blockers, managing risks and dependencies, and ensuring programs deliver on scope, quality, schedule, and business value.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical field (or equivalent practical experience)
3+ years managing multi-team programs with cross-functional dependencies
Experienced with Agile practices at team and program levels (Scrum, PI planning, SAFe or equivalent)
Understanding of platform as product: ability to treat engineering teams as customers and plan solutions that meet their needs and enable their work.
Strong technical fluency, especially in developer tooling, architecture, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and eventing.
Understanding of the challenges of supporting multiple technical stacks.
Strong communication: writes clear PRDs/RFCs, migration/deprecation comms, and executive updates; can translate between platform engineers and product teams. Able to write and speak with honesty, brevity, and the intent of explaining things in a way the intended audience will understand.
Outcome-driven prioritization - makes tradeoffs using data (telemetry) and qualitative inputs (developer feedback), with a bias toward reducing toil and accelerating time-to-value.
Proven program planning and execution skills: road mapping, milestone tracking, dependency management, risk mitigation.
Strong facilitation skills for cross-functional planning and problem resolution.
Able to work independently on assigned tasks, tackle complex problems, identify edge cases, and navigate ambiguity.
Proactive mindset: suggests and implements improvements and optimizations to processes and tools.
Able to engage in valuable, open, exchanges of differing ideas through productive conflict.
Strong sense of accountability. Take ownership of assigned work, seek clarification or guidance when needed, and deliver on time

Nice To Haves

Strong familiarity with developer tooling/platform domains: CI/CD, build systems, source control workflows, artifact management, IaC, containers/Kubernetes, service catalogs, event-based architecture, observability/telemetry, incident management
Experience with cloud platforms and platform security practices (IAM, secrets, policy-as-code, software supply chain)
Familiarity with common tooling ecosystems (e.g., GitHub/GitLab, Azure DevOps, Argo/GitOps, Terraform, Backstage, Datadog, Sentry, PagerDuty)
Experience with multi-stack software environments

Responsibilities

Define and communicate a platform/product vision that aligns with the company’s strategic objectives and market needs
Help evolve and maintain a platform/product roadmap, prioritizing features and requirements based on stakeholder needs, market changes, and strategic goals
Translate business goals into technical priorities, acceptance criteria, and testable requirements with strong consideration for stakeholder needs and operational constraints
Establish internal “customer” understanding via continuous discovery: proactively look for and solve the pain points of engineering teams
Take product-oriented ownership of the relevant aspects of the platform (largely developer tooling and resources)
Manage end-to-end planning and execution for concurrent technical programs, including timelines, milestones, and delivery coordination
Collaborate with engineering technical leadership and communities of practice to help define and approve architecture and technical design; apply core-stack and domain patterns appropriately
Facilitate agile planning to maintain alignment and predictability
Define and track program success metrics, analyze product performance and user engagement, and iterate on product offerings based on data and feedback
Coordinate cross-functional teams and act as the primary liaison between technical and business stakeholders, providing proactive updates, presenting product demos, and communicating strategy and status to all audiences
Identify, log, and mitigate risks; escalate and drive contingency planning as needed
Stay current with industry trends, emerging technologies, and competitor offerings to continuously refine the product strategy
Oversee the product development process to ensure timely delivery of high-quality products that meet customer and market demands
Mentor new hires and collaborate with peers; explain technical concepts clearly and help grow team capability

Benefits

Health Insurance: Traditional OR High Deductible plan
Flexible Spending Accounts
Health Savings Account (including employer contributions)
Dental and Vision
Basic and Supplemental Life Insurance
Short-Term and Long-Term Disability
Paid caregiver leave
You will receive at least 3 weeks of PTO + Holiday Pay + Wellness Hours + Volunteer Hours
401k with company match and immediate vest
Employee Stock Purchase Program at a 15% discounted rate
Matching grants through Protolabs foundation