Senior Product Manager

Senior Product Manager

Apex Systems is a world class technology services business that incorporates industry or insights and experience to deliver solutions that fulfill our clients' digital visions.

Apex has an opportunity for a Senior Product Manager. Candidates must be local to Acton, MA or San Diego, CA.

Our client's Digital Customer Experience (DCX) organization runs on a growing, interconnected set of APIs and integration services that touch nearly every system in our technology stack. We have already built out thousands of individual API methods across more than 40 integrated systems, organized into more than 100 service domains. That is real scale. What we need now is a product leader who can bring order, intent, and forward momentum to that foundation.

This role leads product management for the Integration Services Platform, working across up to five engineering teams, each focused on a distinct domain of APIs and services. This person is accountable for the backlog just as much as they are accountable for the why, the value, the roadmap, and the strategy behind all of it. That means understanding the full pipeline of incoming work, pushing back where the value is unclear, sequencing with intent, and working closely with engineering leadership to set teams up for success.

This role will define and drive a transition toward a self-service integration platform built on MuleSoft, where any product team can build and deploy their own APIs and AI agents without depending on this team to do the work for them. The vision, the roadmap to get there, and the credibility to lead engineering and business stakeholders through that change are core to what this role delivers.

This is not a project management role. It is a product management role in the fullest sense: accountable for outcomes, not just outputs. Success is not measured by stories completed or sprints delivered. It is measured by whether what this team builds actually moves the right metrics, solves real problems for the teams and customers who depend on these services, and advances the platform toward what it needs to become.

This role holds both product management and backlog management responsibilities, spanning the product backlog (the strategy, sequencing, and value work that runs ahead of delivery) and the delivery backlog (the sprint-ready work the teams are executing against now). The balance between them is roughly equal, and maintaining that balance is itself part of the job. Here is the approximate breakdown:

• Product Strategy and Roadmap (~25%): Defining and evolving the vision for the Integration Services Platform, including what it needs to become, in what sequence, and why. Building a roadmap grounded in real constraints and clearly connected to business outcomes. Communicating that roadmap credibly to senior leadership, engineering, and partner product teams.

• Product and Delivery Backlog Management (~25%): Owning both backlogs across all platform teams. On the product backlog side, that means being a central participant in planning and strategy rhythms, including PI planning, roadmap reviews, and capacity conversations, and supporting the value and business case framing those processes require. On the delivery backlog side, it means evaluating every incoming request against existing priorities, writing well-reasoned features and stories that give engineering and QA teams the context they need, and sequencing work against capacity rather than just volume. Both backlogs are this person's responsibility: their contents, their readiness, and their priority.

• Discovery (~20%): Maintaining a continuous practice of understanding the problems this platform is being asked to solve. That means direct engagement with the product teams who depend on these services, analysis of behavioral and operational data, and proactive exploration of integration needs before they become urgent requests. Discovery is not a phase at the start of an initiative. It informs every prioritization decision.

• Team and Engineering Partnership (~20%): Building a strong, trust-based working relationship with engineering leadership and with the engineering and QA teams themselves. This person sets the tone for how product and engineering work together, making sure everyone on the team understands not just what they are building, but why it matters and how it connects to outcomes worth achieving. That kind of clarity is motivating, and it is how you build a team that performs like one regardless of org structure. This includes capacity planning, release sequencing, and trade-off decisions made in genuine partnership with engineering leadership.

• Stakeholder Management (~10%): Managing incoming demand from across the business. Evaluating requests against existing priorities, communicating those decisions transparently, and building the credibility that comes from being the person who makes good calls, including saying no when that is the right answer.

Responsibilities

Product Strategy and Roadmap

• Define and own a platform vision that orients the team around a clear future state: an internal integration platform that enables other product teams to build and deploy their own APIs and AI agents with minimal dependence on this team

• Build a credible roadmap that accounts for current constraints and future capability goals, with clear milestones and decision points along the way

• Identify and sequence the investments required to evolve the platform's API design patterns toward greater resilience, reusability, and scale, including the continued buildout of experience, process, and system layers per MuleSoft best practices

• Communicate the platform roadmap clearly to senior leadership, engineering, and dependent product teams, and keep that communication current as priorities evolve

• Stay current on integration platform trends, AI agent tooling, and developer experience patterns to inform long-term platform direction

• As the platform matures, define the scope of internal developer platform capabilities needed to enable other product teams to self-serve, including documentation, tooling, training, templates, and support pathways

Product and Delivery Backlog Management

• Own both the product backlog and the delivery backlog across all platform teams, including their contents, their readiness, and their priority. A backlog that manages itself is a backlog no one owns

• Be a central participant in planning and strategy rhythms, including PI planning, roadmap reviews, and capacity planning cadences. Where business cases or value statements are needed to support new initiatives, contribute to building them

• Evaluate every incoming request on its merits: what problem is it solving, for whom, and how does it compare to what is already prioritized. Challenge work where the value is unclear before committing the team to it

• Write clear, well-reasoned features, epics, and user stories that give engineering and QA teams the context they need to do their work well. Not just what to build, but why it matters, what problem it solves, and what done looks like

• Maintain a delivery backlog populated far enough ahead that sprint planning proceeds without scrambling. At any given point, be able to answer what the teams will be working on two or more sprints from now

• Accept stories against defined acceptance criteria throughout the sprint, not in batches at the end

• Propose sprint goals as meaningful outcome statements, not just a list of committed stories

• Represent platform needs and priorities in planning processes across DCX, including cross-team dependency management

Discovery

• Maintain a continuous discovery practice through regular engagement with the product teams who depend on integration services, analysis of operational and behavioral data, and proactive identification of integration needs before they become reactive requests

• Define problems clearly before committing to solutions. Understand what teams are actually trying to accomplish and whether a proposed integration is the right answer to that problem

• Keep the product backlog grounded in current understanding, not just stakeholder requests from the last planning cycle

• Make assumptions explicit and find ways to test them before committing engineering capacity to building

Team and Engineering Partnership

• Build a trust-based, peer-level relationship with engineering leadership on this team. Be a credible product counterpart, not a project coordinator or a gatekeeper

• Set the tone for how the broader team works together. Make sure engineers and QA understand not just what they are building, but why the work matters and how it connects to outcomes worth achieving. That clarity is one of the most motivating things a product leader can provide

• Foster a team culture where people feel genuinely valued, where their work is connected to something meaningful, and where collaboration across disciplines is the norm rather than the exception

• Partner with engineering leadership on capacity planning, release sequencing, and technical trade-off decisions without overstepping into engineering's domain

• Collaborate with product managers across DCX to identify and prioritize integration needs ahead of demand

Stakeholder Management

• Manage incoming demand from across the business with a clear framework: evaluate requests against existing priorities, communicate decisions transparently, and make trade-offs visible when new work would displace what is already committed

• Build organizational credibility through consistent, evidence-based decision making, including saying no or not now when that is the right call

• Communicate platform direction and roadmap proactively so stakeholders are not discovering priority decisions for the first time at a sprint review

• Bring