Contract Title: Product Manager

Start Date: Immediately

Contract End Date: December 15, 2023

Submission Deadline: March 12, 2023

Job Ad ID#: PM-TO

About Us

Brandish is a creative agency helping brands in their pursuit of relevance by focusing on the people our clients are trying to connect with – their audience. As a people-driven agency, we emphasize a culture that is flexible and adaptive to the ever-changing world of work. We are a remote-first agency with co-working spaces for optional use in Winnipeg and Toronto. Our people are enthusiastic problem solvers who share their diverse skill sets, perspectives and experiences throughout our agency across Canada.

About Product@Brandish

Product Management at Brandish takes a unique approach to user-centric development – close collaboration with our Brand Strategy team. Working in a consultative capacity, we are looking for someone who can turn customer needs and business objectives into web-based platforms that are integral to our clients’ businesses.

About this Contract

Brandish is open to working with an individual or a company that can fulfill this contract, ending December 15, 2023.

The Product Manager will be a key member of the team that brings brands to life through channels that matter to customers. The role will be focused on a particular enterprise client project in the automotive retail space. You will work closely with UX, Brand Strategy, Development, QA and other Product Managers both internally and externally to drive the evolution of the car purchasing experience in Canada.

The Product Manager is responsible for bringing together stakeholders from across Brandish and the client organization to make the development of performant web and native-mobile platforms possible, including Brand Strategy, User Experience, Technical/Development, Content and Engagement.

The Product Manager is ultimately responsible for establishing the balance between creating a platform that achieves business objectives and engages end users. Most importantly the Product Manager is able to act as a leader and draw upon their personal capabilities rather than relying on a title or a reporting structure to lead.

The Product Manager is responsible for:

• Collaborating with User Experience, Brand Strategy, Development, QA and other Product Managers both internally and externally to build and execute on the Product roadmap
• Working with competitive research output to identify opportunities and best paths forward related to implementing in-market solutions for user problems and opportunities
• Working with technical/development team to prioritize feature development sequence, making inferences but not taking ultimate responsibility for prioritization
• Understanding the factors that go into making accurate effort estimates for technical and UX work
• Providing User Story/business case/success state-specifications that developers will use for product development
• Working with the output of the Brand Strategy process to identify opportunities for differentiating functionality to supplement in-market features that will set client properties apart from competitors and comparables
• Taking Product Strategy and transforming into full user story specifications that provide direction for UX Designer/Strategist to create necessary visual specifications and also technical details that will provide direction for developers to write application code
• Working with technical team (leads) to identify sensible scope for releases including MVP and subsequent
• Prioritizing and estimating work with technical team, taking business and user requirements into consideration as well as hypothesizing around what features will have the most significant impact
• Working with Technical team to manage timeline, pivoting appropriately as needed if timelines become unrealistic/require change

About You

Must-have qualifications:

• 2+ years’ experience in a Product Management role with a B2C-focus
• Strong knowledge and understanding of Product Management and Agile Development frameworks
• Portfolio:
  • Must have examples of product(s) that have been launched in-market, and be ready to speak to the creation process and reasoning behind their success or failure
  • Demonstrated ability to ship products on time through effective scope management and timely pivots
• 2-3 professional references
• Experience working in a consulting capacity and/or with high value consumer retail industries is a plus

Education:

• Demonstrated initiative to continuously improve personal capabilities through ongoing learning and training

Personal skills and abilities:

• Comfortable working with in-house, client and outsourced technical teams
• Ability to support the process of estimating user story development, planning sprints and prioritizing development
• Demonstrated ability to empathize with (prospective) users and plan to build for the needs and wants of others towards achieving business objectives
• Ability to work independently without direct supervision/support from a Product team
• Excellent communicator both written and verbal
• Leadership qualities that enable driving a team to achieving an objective without relying on hierarchy/structure
• Familiarity with HTML, CSS and front-end web development concepts (but you absolutely don’t need to be an engineer/developer!)

Tools and software:

• Jira, PivotalTracker or an equivalent Product Management platform
• Google Drive (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.)
• Google Meet or Zoom
• Slack or MS Teams
• ClickUp or Asana (not required, but an asset)

Compensation & Contract Details

• Start date: Immediately
• End date: December 15, 2023 with possibility of extension. Contract dates are dependent on client needs.
• Compensation to be negotiated: Our ideal agreement is a retainer or flat project fee. Selected candidates will have an opportunity to negotiate specific contract details based upon scope of work (which will only be shared after signing NDA)
• Location: This contract is open to applications to all candidates regardless of geography.
• Availability: Brandish’s team operates from approximately 9am to 5pm Central Time (North America) - Monday thru Thursday. You must have at least some availability during these hours.