Technical Product Manager

Job Description

At FlowFuse, the Technical Product Manager (TPM) is the critical bridge between product strategy and technical execution. This individual is a technology-savvy product leader who translates complex technical challenges into concrete product outcomes while ensuring engineering teams deliver solutions that meet both customer needs and technical excellence standards. The TPM isn't just managing features; they're architecting measurable outcomes that directly drive product success and team performance.

This role demands a unique blend of technical depth and product acumen. The Technical Product Manager must be comfortable diving deep into technical architecture, understanding engineering trade-offs, and making data-driven decisions about technical debt, scalability, and performance. They are the key orchestrator who ensures product strategy translates into specific, measurable technical deliverables that propel FlowFuse's competitive advantage.

The Technical Product Manager reports to the Director of Product and is primarily responsible for:

• Bridging Product Strategy and Technical Execution: Translating high-level product strategy into specific, measurable technical outcomes and ensuring engineering teams have clear, actionable objectives that align with business goals.
• Defining Technical Product Requirements: Working closely with engineering to define technically sound requirements that balance user needs, technical feasibility, and business impact, while making informed trade-off decisions.
• Delivering Measurable Outcomes: Establishing clear success metrics and KPIs for product initiatives, continuously measuring and communicating progress, and ensuring every technical decision contributes to quantifiable business results.

Core Tasks and Responsibilities:

• Define and Track Technical Product Metrics: The TPM is the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) for establishing, tracking, and reporting on key product and technical metrics that measure feature adoption, performance, reliability, and business impact.
• Technical Release Planning and Execution: The TPM collaborates closely with engineering leadership to plan releases, prioritize technical work, and ensure the engineering roadmap aligns with product strategy while managing technical debt and infrastructure needs.
• Technical Specification and Architecture Input: The TPM works with engineering to develop detailed technical specifications, provides input on architectural decisions that impact product functionality, and ensures technical solutions align with product vision.
• Cross-Functional Technical Communication: The TPM serves as the technical liaison between product, engineering, sales, and customer success, translating complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders and business requirements for engineering teams.
• Data-Driven Technical Prioritization: The TPM analyzes product usage data, technical metrics, customer feedback, and engineering capacity to make informed prioritization decisions about features, bugs, technical debt, and infrastructure improvements.
• Technical Feasibility Assessment: The TPM evaluates the technical feasibility and complexity of proposed features, working with engineering to understand implementation approaches, effort estimates, and potential technical risks.
• Quality and Performance Advocacy: The TPM establishes and monitors quality standards, performance benchmarks, and reliability targets, ensuring technical execution meets both customer expectations and product excellence standards.

What is the Technical Product Manager not responsible for?

• Writing production code or implementing features directly.
• Managing engineers: The TPM influences technical direction but does not have direct management responsibility for engineering team members.
• Final technical architecture decisions: While the TPM provides input and influences decisions, the CTO and engineering leadership own the final technical architecture.
• Individual engineer performance management: The TPM collaborates with engineering managers on technical priorities but does not manage individual performance reviews or career development.

Skills

What the Technical Product Manager brings to the table:

• Technical Depth: Strong technical background with the ability to understand system architecture, APIs, databases, and software development processes. Experience with low-code platforms, Node-RED, or similar technologies is highly valuable.
• Outcome-Oriented Mindset: Proven ability to define and track measurable outcomes, establish KPIs, and use data to drive decisions and demonstrate impact.
• Product and Engineering Fluency: Experience working at the intersection of product and engineering, comfortable discussing both user stories and technical implementation details.
• Strategic to Tactical Execution: Ability to connect high-level product strategy to specific technical deliverables, breaking down strategic objectives into achievable milestones.
• Analytical and Data-Driven: Strong analytical skills with experience using quantitative and qualitative data to inform prioritization, measure success, and identify opportunities.
• Technical Communication: Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences and translate business requirements into clear technical specifications.
• Collaborative Problem Solver: Proven experience working effectively with engineering teams, understanding technical constraints, and finding pragmatic solutions to complex problems.
• Trade-off Decision Making: Demonstrated ability to make informed decisions balancing technical debt, new features, performance, scalability, and business priorities.

Hiring Plan

1. Resume Screening: Review resumes and cover letters to assess candidate qualifications, technical background, product management experience, and domain expertise. Done by the hiring manager.
2. Screening call for 20 minutes. Done by recruiter.
3. Director of Product Interview (STAR, Product, and Technical Fit) for 45m: Conduct a video interview to evaluate product management experience, technical knowledge, ability to define measurable outcomes, and communication skills. Discuss the candidate's approach to bridging product strategy and technical execution.
4. CTO Interview (Technical Depth and Collaboration) for 45m: A video interview that assesses technical depth, understanding of software development processes, ability to work with engineering teams, and approach to technical trade-off decisions.
5. Engineering Manager Interview (Technical Collaboration) for 30m: Evaluate the candidate's ability to collaborate with engineering teams, understand technical constraints, and effectively communicate requirements and priorities. Done by an Engineering Manager.
6. Technical Case Study Presentation: Candidate will present a case study from their experience where they successfully bridged product strategy and technical execution. They should demonstrate how they defined measurable outcomes, worked with engineering, made trade-off decisions, and delivered results. The presentation should include metrics and lessons learned.
7. Final Interview (optional): A final interview with the VP of Sales or another key stakeholder to assess cross-functional collaboration skills and alignment with company objectives.
8. Offer: Extend an offer to the selected candidate.