Product Manager

Description

The Product Manager will be primarily responsible for developing the product requirements, roadmap, positioning and competitive analysis for direct-to-consumer controllers and accessories. In order to do this effectively the Product Manager will need to understand the needs of the customer as well as be knowledgeable with any relevant competitive offerings. The Product Manager will work closely with the various engineering teams, local and in the Far-East, to develop these products.

The Product Manager will work with various internal groups, including product management, the studios, marketing, customer support, engineering and QA on product feature deliverables, primarily to ensure that the internal teams are working against a master schedule, identifying important cross-functional dependencies and prioritizing product development tasks accordingly.

Position Responsibilities (in order of importance - percent of time over a year)
(80%) Cooperatively manage the complete product development cycle from concept creation to final production.
(10%) Ensure hardware specifications, usability, performance, cost, schedules and timelines are inline with company objectives
(10%) Continually assess current business practices and develop action plans to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Position Duties

Lead the development of a product and all derivative SKUs

General Management
· Be the primary advocate for the project within the RedOctane/Activision organization.
· Provide the link between different groups on the project (Software Developer, First-Party, EE, Firmware, Far East R&D) to ensure the health of the product from inception to release.
· Organize and disseminate information to the team.
· Coordinate and lead team meetings.

Development
· Oversee in-house product design functions to ensure all hardware requirements are met.
· Visit R&D and manufacturing sites to perform functions relative to the development or qualification of product.
· Develop, review and co-operatively approve product specifications and test procedures.
· Provide input with respect to evaluation of new technologies and suppliers.

Scheduling and Tracking
· Work with team to create a schedule, milestones and the overall plan.
· Provide timely risk assessments for project to management, with proposed solutions.

Marketing and Public Relations
· Guide the relationship with Marketing and PR; support the creation of Marketing and PR plans
· Work with Marketing and PR to coordinate the supply of controllers for demo and review use.

Process Improvement
As RedOctane/Activision is still a growing organization, the Product Manager will also be called upon to identify areas for improvement, develop plans to meet the need and execute against those plans to help build solutions that increase effectiveness of the hardware team.

Principal Working Relationships
· Hardware team including R&D
· First Parties
· Studios and QA Leads
· Marketing Brand Managers
· International Offices