Senior Product Manager - Santa Monica, 90404

Senior Product Manager - Santa Monica, 90404, United States of America

How we LEAD:

Universal Music Group is seeking a Senior Product Manager to lead the evolution of our next-generation Financial Forecasting & Planning Platform. This platform leverages predictive analytics, generative AI, and intelligent decision-support capabilities to support one of the company's most critical business processes: forecasting financial performance across a complex global organization.

Reporting into the central Data & AI organization, this role will serve as the product owner and strategic leader for a custom-built forecasting application used by Finance teams across UMG. The successful candidate will partner closely with Finance leadership, data scientists, engineers, and business stakeholders to transform forecasting from a largely manual process into a scalable, intelligent, and continuously improving product.

This is a highly cross-functional role requiring equal comfort discussing forecasting methodologies with finance executives, technical architecture with engineers, AI-assisted software development practices, and product strategy with senior leadership.

The role is based in Santa Monica, California and requires close partnership with UMG's global Finance organization.

This is an opportunity to shape not only what we build, but how we build it. We believe AI is fundamentally changing software development, enabling product teams to move from ideas to working software faster than ever before. We are looking for a product leader who is excited to help define an AI-native product development culture alongside our engineering and data teams.

How you'll CREATE:

Own the Product Vision and Roadmap

• Define and execute the long-term product strategy for UMG's Financial Forecasting & Planning Platform.

• Develop and maintain a prioritized roadmap that balances business impact, technical feasibility, operational efficiency, and user experience.

• Partner with Finance leadership to translate forecasting requirements into scalable product capabilities.

• Establish a product vision that leverages predictive models, generative AI, and intelligent agents to transform financial planning into a collaborative decision-support platform.

Partner Deeply with Finance

• Embed closely with Finance teams to understand forecasting workflows, planning cycles, assumptions, approval processes, and reporting requirements.

• Identify opportunities to automate manual processes, improve forecast accuracy, and increase organizational visibility into forecast drivers.

• Facilitate alignment across global stakeholders on forecasting methodologies, business definitions, and planning processes.

• Act as the primary bridge between Finance and technical teams.

Lead Cross-Functional Delivery

• Lead a dedicated product team consisting of machine learning scientists, data engineers, full-stack engineers, and project management resources.

• Drive product discovery, requirements definition, prioritization, execution, testing, and release planning.

• Ensure delivery teams remain focused on measurable business outcomes rather than technical outputs alone.

• Coordinate with enterprise technology, data, and analytics teams to ensure alignment with broader platform strategy.

• Partner closely with engineering teams using AI-assisted development tools to accelerate product delivery while maintaining quality and governance.

• Rapidly prototype product ideas using AI coding tools where appropriate to validate concepts before committing engineering investment.

• Help establish modern product development practices that incorporate AI across discovery, prototyping, engineering collaboration, testing, documentation, and release planning.

Drive Adoption and Business Impact

• Define success metrics and KPIs for forecast quality, operational efficiency, user adoption, and business value.

• Monitor platform performance and continuously identify opportunities for improvement.

• Lead change management efforts and stakeholder communications across Finance and business teams.

• Build strong relationships with executive sponsors and key users to ensure the platform becomes a trusted part of financial decision-making.

Shape the Future of Intelligent Forecasting

• Partner with Engineering and Data Science teams to operationalize predictive models, LLM-powered workflows, and intelligent planning capabilities.

• Evaluate emerging AI capabilities and identify opportunities to enhance planning, scenario modeling, forecasting documentation, and decision support.

• Continuously evaluate emerging AI technologiesincluding agentic workflows and AI-assisted software developmentto improve both our products and our product development process.

• Help establish a long-term vision for AI-enabled financial planning and forecasting across UMG.

Build Products with AI

• We believe AI is fundamentally changing how software is designed, built, and shippednot just what software can do.
• You'll help establish modern product development practices that leverage AI throughout the development lifecycle, including product discovery, rapid prototyping, requirements generation, engineering collaboration, testing, documentation, and release planning.
• You'll partner with engineering leadership to continuously evolve our AI-enabled development process and evaluate emerging capabilities such as Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, and other AI-assisted engineering tools.

Bring your VIBE:

Required qualifications

• 7+ years of product management experience leading complex software products or enterprise applications.

• Experience building and launching custom business applications, workflow platforms, planning systems, or data-intensive products.

• Demonstrated success leading cross-functional teams that include engineering, analytics, and business stakeholders.

• Strong understanding of software development lifecycles and agile product development practices.

• Experience defining product strategy, roadmaps, and business cases for enterprise software initiatives.

• Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, including experience working with senior executives.

• Comfort working directly with engineers in modern AI-assisted software development environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting Finance, FP&A, forecasting, planning, accounting, ERP, or business operations functions.

• Familiarity with forecasting methodologies, financial planning processes, budgeting, or scenario modeling.

• Experience working with machine learning, predictive analytics, or AI-enabled products.

• Understanding of modern data platforms, cloud technologies, and analytics ecosystems.

• Experience leading products that combine structured data, statistical models, and business workflows.

• MBA, finance background, or equivalent business experience is a plus.

• Experience using AI coding assistants such as Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, or similar tools as part of everyday product development.

• Demonstrated ability to rapidly prototype ideas using AI rather than relying exclusively on traditional engineering cycles.

• Experience introducing AI into software delivery workflows to improve experimentation, documentation, testing, or engineering productivity.

• Curiosity about agentic software development, AI-native product teams, and emerging engineering practices.

Success in the First 12 Months

• Establish a clear product vision and multi-year roadmap for the forecasting platform.

• Become a trusted partner to Finance leadership and key forecasting stakeholders.

• Improve forecasting workflows through automation, usability improvements, and operational efficiencies.

• Successfully lead a multidisciplinary product team delivering measurable business outcomes.

• Increase confidence, transparency, and scalability in UMG's global forecasting process.

• Establish an AI-native product development process that materially improves experimentation speed, prototyping capability, engineering collaboration, and delivery velocity.

• Lay the foundation for future AI-enabled forecasting and planning capabilities.