Product Manager

Job Summary

Discovers, develops and evaluates new product ideas, enhancements to existing products, and strategic product extensions within Cox Automotive's Instant Cash Offer (ICO) product. Compiles and evaluates research on market and consumer requirements, and translates validated opportunities into usable, marketable, AI-enabled product solutions. Establishes product specifications and coordinates with engineering, UX, analytics, marketing, and business stakeholders to ensure successful product development and implementation.

This role operates under Cox Automotive's consolidated Product Creator model, which unifies Product Manager and Product Owner disciplines into a single, AI-native product practice spanning five practice areas: Market & Client Research, Product Strategy, Product Development, In-Market Product Performance, and Professional Essentials. The Sr Product Manager is expected to own end-to-end product work - from discovery through delivery and measurement - directing AI across the product lifecycle to accelerate the work, and building tangible artifacts (prototypes, specs, analyses) directly rather than waiting for a handoff.

Primary Duties / Key Responsibilities

Discovery, Strategy & Market Understanding

• Studies ICO consumers, dealers, competitors, and market conditions to identify opportunities and inform what to build, drawing on customer segmentation, competitive intelligence, and problem/opportunity discovery.

• Partners with UX research, marketing research, client solutions, and business stakeholders to gather consumer and dealer feedback - pairing firsthand observation with AI-driven synthesis at scale.

• Develops and maintains product vision, business plans, and value proposition for ICO by aligning market, consumer, dealer, and business goals; contributes to roadmap development and commercialization planning.

• Evaluates consumer, market, and financial data; identifies emerging patterns, trends, and problems; recommends strategies and approaches for resolution.

Product Development & Delivery

• Provides Product Management support for broader and more complex ICO products and features, managing more complex aspects of the existing product line within a stable market.

• Owns backlog creation and refinement, incremental value versioning, and agile delivery tooling management (Rally) to translate validated opportunities into iteratively built and refined solutions.

• Authors high-quality specs that are clear enough for both teams and AI agents to execute without ambiguity, and manages feature development against them.

• Applies context engineering - building and maintaining reusable context (product vision, personas, prior decisions, research) to ground both human and AI-assisted work (discovery synthesis, story writing, spec drafting) in accurate, current information.

• Builds prototypes and working artifacts with AI-native tools (e.g., Claude, Claude Code, Figma Make) to validate solutions before engineering writes a line of code; runs experimentation and trade-off analysis to validate product decisions.

• Manages stakeholder analysis and dependency management across cross-functional teams (engineering, UX, analytics, marketing, sales, client solutions), and makes recommendations to agile release train teams with a bias toward action to move quickly on incomplete information.

• Manages product readiness and launch activities, ensuring the product addresses marketplace access, format, key features and functionality requirements, and service and support requirements.

Performance, Measurement & Continuous Improvement

• Leverages product performance measurement, evaluation, and life cycle management to guide ongoing strategy and investment decisions.

• Collaborates cross-functionally to evaluate opportunities with a promise of positive product / product line impact, and recommends and helps implement Product Management process improvement initiatives.

• Other duties as needed or required.

Required Experience & Specialized Knowledge and Skills

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in a related discipline and 4 years' experience in a related field; or an equivalent combination such as a master's degree and 2 years' experience, a Ph.D. and 1 year of experience, or 12 years' experience in a related field with no degree.

• Familiarity with SAFe Agile methodology; hands-on experience with product planning, lifecycle methodologies, research, analysis, epics, features, KPIs, and analytics.

• Comfort using AI tools (e.g., Claude, Claude Code, Figma Make) to research, prototype, and author specs - and the judgment to critically evaluate what they produce.

Market & Client Research

• Market & user research, customer segmentation, and competitive intelligence to inform what to build.

• Problem & opportunity identification, problem discovery, and research synthesis.

Product Strategy

• Vision & strategy setting and solution discovery, aligning market, client, and business goals.

• Commercialization planning and roadmap development.

Product Development

• Backlog creation & refinement and incremental value versioning; proficiency with agile delivery tooling (Rally or equivalent).

• Experimentation, trade-off analysis, and product validation.

• Stakeholder analysis & management and dependency management across cross-functional teams.

• Product readiness & launch management.

• Context engineering: builds and maintains structured context - product vision, personas, prior decisions, research - to improve the reliability of both human and AI-assisted product work.

In-Market Product Performance

• Product performance measurement & evaluation, and product life cycle management, to guide strategy and investment.

Professional Essentials

• Strong communication, collaboration & partnership, curiosity, enterprise thinking, and ownership mindset.

• Data-driven decision making and technology savvy.

• AI-native product building: fluent, hands-on use of approved AI tooling (e.g., Rally-integrated agentic workflows, Claude, Microsoft Copilot) for discovery synthesis, spec and story drafting, and stress-testing product decisions - while maintaining data responsibility (no customer PII, dealer data, or confidential business information in AI tools).

Preferred

• Automotive industry experience with a focus on consumer or dealer software.

• Experience with vehicle valuation, appraisal, or trade-in/disposal products.

USD 121,800.00 - 203,000.00 per year

Compensation:

Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $121,800.00 - $203,000.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.

Benefits:

The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.

EOE, including disability/vets