Product Manager

Job Description

Job Description

Quanex is looking for a Product Manager to join our team located in Owatonna, Minnesota. 

The Product Manager is the enterprise product and market expert for colors, coatings, plating, and decorative and protective finishes across the Quanex Hardware Solutions portfolio. This role owns the finishes strategy and lifecycle, with a primary focus on harmonizing color offerings, naming conventions, specifications, master standards, and customer-facing tools across product lines. The Product Manager translates customer and market needs into differentiated finish solutions; partners with engineering, operations, sourcing, quality, sales, and marketing to ensure consistent appearance and performance; and leads commercialization of new or improved finishes. The role is accountable for the finishes roadmap, portfolio simplification, growth, profitability, quality, and customer adoption.

We Offer You!

• Competitive Salary
• Bonus Potential
• 401K with 5% company match, yours to keep after 2 years
• 15% immediate return if you participate in the company’s ESPP
• Medical, Dental & Vision Plans
• Employer paid disability plans and life insurance
• Paid Time Off & Holidays
• Various Work Schedules
• Tuition support for degree and continuous education
• Employee Resource Groups focused on employee empowerment

What’s attractive about the Product Manager position? 

• Enterprise Impact: This role has broad influence across the entire Quanex Hardware Solutions portfolio, shaping the strategy, standardization, and future direction of colors and finishes across multiple product lines and facilities.
• Strategic and Cross-Functional Leadership: The position offers the opportunity to lead complex initiatives and collaborate with engineering, operations, quality, sourcing, sales, marketing, suppliers, and customers without direct authority.
• Innovation and Market Influence: The Product Manager drives the development and commercialization of new finishes, responds to architectural and design trends, and helps bring differentiated solutions to market.
• High Visibility and Business Ownership: The role owns the finishes roadmap, portfolio governance, pricing recommendations, lifecycle management, profitability, and customer adoption, providing significant ownership and accountability.
• Unique Blend of Technical and Commercial Expertise: It combines product management, market research, customer engagement, color science, manufacturing processes, and business strategy into a highly specialized and impactful role.
• Growth and Development Opportunities: Employees benefit from professional development programs, tuition assistance, competitive compensation, bonus potential, and the opportunity to become an enterprise subject matter expert.
• Customer-Centric Focus: The role directly influences customer experience through finish standardization, color tools, product launches, training programs, and customer-facing solutions.

What Success Looks Like:  

• Successfully develops and executes an enterprise finishes strategy that aligns customer needs, market trends, operational capabilities, and profitability goals.
• Drives harmonization of colors, finish standards, naming conventions, specifications, and customer communications across the Quanex Hardware Solutions portfolio.
• Launches innovative finishes and surface technologies that increase revenue, customer adoption, and competitive differentiation.
• Establishes effective governance processes that ensure consistent decision-making for finish introductions, modifications, approvals, and discontinuations.
• Improves finish consistency, durability, quality, and operational efficiency while reducing complexity, variation, obsolete inventory, and costs.
• Delivers actionable market insights from customer feedback, competitive analysis, and industry trends to guide strategic decisions.
• Creates strong partnerships across engineering, operations, sourcing, quality, sales, marketing, suppliers, and customers to execute initiatives successfully.
• Provides effective training and support that enables sales teams, distributors, and customers to confidently recommend and specify Quanex finish solutions.
• Uses portfolio analytics to optimize product mix, pricing, profitability, inventory, and lifecycle management decisions.
• Achieves measurable improvements in revenue growth, margin performance, customer satisfaction, service levels, and portfolio simplification.

  What You Bring:

• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, materials science, chemistry, industrial design, marketing, or a related field; MBA or advanced technical degree is preferred.
• 5-7 years of professional experience, preferably in B2B product management, finishes, coatings, building products, hardware, or a manufacturing environment.
• Experience partnering with customers, engineering, operations, quality, sourcing, suppliers, sales, and marketing in the development and lifecycle management of products or finishes.
• Working knowledge of coating, plating, painting, anodizing, powder coating, or related finishing technologies is strongly preferred.
• Experience leading portfolio harmonization, standardization, SKU rationalization, specification governance, or multi-site change initiatives is preferred.
• Demonstrated success in problem solving, idea generation, business-case development, and cross-functional project execution.
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 25% of the time.

The salary range for this position is $88K - $107K with the potential to earn an annual bonus.

About Quanex, A Part of Something Bigger

  Quanex (NYSE: NX) is a global, publicly traded manufacturing company primarily serving OEMs in the fenestration, cabinetry, solar, refrigeration and outdoor products markets. We are A Part of Something Bigger by improving the performance and aesthetics of end products through continuous innovation, helping customers achieve greater production efficiencies, dedication to giving back to communities where we operate, producing shareholder value and helping our employees learn, grow, and thrive. Learn more at Quanex.com.

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