VP, Product Management

#### **About the Job:** LaunchDarkly is the runtime control plane for the AI software development lifecycle (AI-SDLC). Thousands of engineering organizations, including more than a quarter of the Fortune 500, use LaunchDarkly to ship, measure, and control every change that reaches production, whether it is written by people or by AI. Feature management built the company. The next chapter is bigger: as the cost of writing code falls and the volume of change outpaces human review, the constraint is moving from writing software to controlling it. LaunchDarkly is building the critical infrastructure for the AI-SDLC. Customers build their own software factories. We build the rails they run on. We are hiring the leader of Product Management for LaunchDarkly. Reporting to the Chief Product Officer, you will own the product management organization end to end: the people, operating system, roadmap commitments, and commercial outcomes across every product pillar. You will sit at the technology leadership table as the Product Management peer to the heads of Engineering and Product Design. The CPO sets the company’s product vision and strategic direction. You will build and run the product organization that turns that direction into a coherent portfolio, shipped outcomes, customer adoption, and revenue growth. This is a hands-on operating role for a product leader who knows how to build the machine, make the tradeoffs, and finish the work. #### Responsibilities: - **Lead cross-functional product leadership.** Serve as the product counterpart to Engineering, Product Design, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Finance. Resolve cross-functional tradeoffs, establish shared commitments, and ensure LaunchDarkly presents one coherent product strategy to customers and the market. - **Build and lead the product management organization.** Design the organization intentionally, allocate resources effectively, maintain a high talent bar, build succession plans, and establish clear ownership for every product surface a customer or sales representative may ask about. - **Own the product operating system.** Establish the cadence that turns strategy into shipped software and met goals, including quarterly commitments, leadership reviews, squad-level inspection, launch briefs, new product introduction (NPI), and the product-to-field handoff. Make execution predictable enough that the executive team does not have to ask whether something shipped. - **Drive roadmap delivery across every product pillar.** Lead execution across Enterprise, Foundation, Observability, Experimentation, Agent Control, Automation, and the platform beneath them. Build a culture of doing what we say we are going to do. - **Create portfolio discipline without slowing the company down.** Ensure new bets enter the portfolio through explicit decisions rather than hallway conversations, while preserving the flexibility to respond to market changes. Marketing dates should be commitments the product organization can confidently support. - **Drive finishing.** A product is not done when version one ships; it is done when the team has iterated based on learning. A launch is not done when it ships; it is done when the field is amplifying it. A process is not done when it is written; it is done when it creates leverage for the team. - **Own packaging execution and commercial outcomes.** Lead how pricing and packaging land in the product and in the field so every representative can sell the full platform and every pillar contributes to its commercial goals. - **Stay close to customers and the field.** Spend time with the largest customers and most demanding evaluators, translate what you learn into product decisions, and build a process that brings customer and field insight into the roadmap at scale. - **Use AI to increase product and engineering leverage.** Help the organization adopt AI-assisted development and product practices in ways that increase delivery speed while maintaining quality and judgment. #### What Success Looks Like in Your First Year: - The organization is complete. The leadership model is in place, product lines have the right pillar leadership, spans and layers are intentional, decision rights are clear, succession risks are understood, and the organization can continue to scale. - Delivery increases every quarter. Shipped output per team rises quarter over quarter as AI-assisted development compounds, with quality holding. - The operating system runs without the CPO driving it. Reviews, check-ins, launch briefs, and NPI happen on cadence and at a consistent bar. - The portfolio is staffed. Every initiative in flight has an explicit staffing decision and plan behind it. - The numbers move. Activation, attach, activity, and expansion targets for each pillar respond to the organization’s inputs. - The team is stronger than you found it. Product managers have more leverage, complementary strengths are valued over a uniform mold, and every hire raises the bar. #### About You: - You are direct, decisive, and high-agency. You identify a problem, propose a fix, and act unless someone tells you not to. - You are a relentless simplifier, not a caretaker. When you find friction, your instinct is to remove process rather than add it. You know how to run a company of this size like a small company that ships. - You are a builder of people and move quickly on people problems. Product leaders who have worked for you say you made them better and would work for you again. You raise the bar clearly, promote based on evidence, and do not allow known performance problems to persist. - You are comfortable challenging a strategy and turning it into a sequenced portfolio. You can tell the story of an idea you pushed back on, how you used evidence to make the call, and how you maintained the relationship. - You write clearly and make decisions. You use written argument to create alignment, expect strong writing from your team, and end meetings with a decision. - You are customer-oriented and commercially grounded. You can move from a conversation with a developer or data scientist to a discussion with an executive buyer or sales leader without losing the thread. #### Qualifications: - Minimum of 15+ years of experience in Product Management, including 7+ years leading Product Managers and product leaders across a multi-product B2B platform**.** - Experience leading Product Management at the VP, SVP, or equivalent level across a multi-product B2B platform. - Experience leading a product management organization of 20 or more product managers at a company with approximately $100M to $500M in revenue. - A track record of building and developing a product organization, rather than simply inheriting one. - Demonstrated ability to turn company strategy into a reliable operating system that delivers roadmap commitments and measurable business outcomes. - Experience working with a founder or visionary executive and converting a high volume of ideas into a sequenced, resourced portfolio. - Experience building products for engineering organizations and selling to CTOs, platform leaders, and data science teams. - Strong commercial fluency, including experience owning or materially influencing pricing, packaging, attach, expansion, and go-to-market execution. - Experience balancing enterprise and self-serve motions, including an understanding of what drives a large enterprise expansion and what creates value for a developer on a free plan. - Practical experience using AI agents in your own work and applying AI-native approaches to product management or software development. You should have clear opinions about how AI changes product management, supported by things you have shipped. - Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity, make decisions with incomplete information, and improve delivery speed without compromising product quality. **Pay:** *Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones\* for Level E1:* - Zone 1: *San Francisco/Bay Area or NYC Metropolitan Area, Boston, Seattle* - *$424,000 - $583,000*\*\* - Zone 2: *Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago - $381,600 - $524,700*\* - Zone 3: *All other US locations - $360,400 - $495,550*\* - All Zones Inclusive of 25% Bonus Target *LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.* *\*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.* *\*\*Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.* #### **About LaunchDarkly:** Modern software delivery was supposed to be the foundation for a thriving digital business but reality has proven otherwise. Slow, inefficient development cycles, costly outages, and fragmented customer experiences are preventing developers from building their best software. The LaunchDarkly platform helps developers innovate on new features faster while protecting them with a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong. Developers can target product experiences to any customer segment and maximize the business impact of every feature. And by gradually rolling out new application components, they escape nightmare "big-bang" technology migrations. The LaunchDarkly platform was built to guide engineers to the next frontier of DevOps by: - Improving the velocity and stability of software releases, without the fear of end customer outages - Delivering targeted experiences by easily personalizing features to customer cohorts - Maximizing the business impact of every feature through the ability to experiment and optimize - Coordinating the release and optimization of software to provide consistent experiences across mobile platforms and device types - Improving the effectiveness and productivity of engineering teams, by providing insights into engineering cadence and stability At LaunchDarkly, we believe in the power of teams. We're building a team that is humble, open, collaborative, respectful and kind. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. LD invites any applicant to review our written Affirmative Action Plan. To do so, contact People Ops at [hr@launchdarkly.com](mailto:hr@launchdarkly.com). **Do you need a disability accommodation?** Fill out this [accommodations request form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYb_7upYMtdRVXzvXGHGfQw0pU2FNma-6Rwp-I6NjKm7SYNw/viewform) and someone from our People Operations team will contact you for assistance. **Your safety matters to us.** To protect yourself from potential scams, LaunchDarkly recruiters will only contact you from [@LaunchDarkly](https://launchdarkly.slack.com/team/UKEE4GBS6).com email addresses or via LinkedIn from "Verified Recruiter" cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate LaunchDarkly recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before making a job offer. LaunchDarkly will never make a job offer without conducting a formal interview process. Our interview process does not involve asking detailed questions by email. If you are ever unsure about a communication that you receive, don't click any links—visit [Careers | LaunchDarkly](https://launchdarkly.com/careers/) directly for confirmed job openings and links to apply. Please notify us of any fraudulent representation by sending an email to [careers@launchdarkly.com](mailto:careers@launchdarkly.com).