Sr Product Manager

Sr Product Manager

We are seeking a Senior Product Manager to join our Vehicle Acquisition team within the AcES Release Train at vAuto. In this role, you will help shape how dealers source, evaluate, and acquire used vehicle inventory by leveraging market data, vehicle condition insights, and predictive signals to drive confident purchasing decisions. Working alongside other PMs on the Acquisition team, you will partner closely with cross-functional teams, including AI-Integrated Teams, to lead initiatives from problem discovery through delivery and adoption. By synthesizing customer feedback, business priorities, and stakeholder insights, you will identify gaps in acquisition workflows and deliver solutions that improve dealer outcomes. This role is ideal for a product leader who thrives in an outcome-driven, spec-based environment, operates independently, and brings strong execution discipline along with practical experience applying AI to product development.

What You Will Own:

• Discovery and Strategy. Identify and validate problems through dealer partners, performance managers, Sales, Support, and internal stakeholders. Use data, customer evidence, and competitive context to build a defensible point of view on what to build — and defend it with specifics.
• Roadmap and Backlog. Define and maintain a forward-looking product roadmap in partnership with product leadership. Own Epics and Features end-to-end, including PI Planning input and backlog prioritization. Keep AIT teams supplied with well-understood, sequenced work — enough runway to maintain momentum without committing to solutions before the problem is clear.
• Spec-Driven Development. Author Discovery Specs and co-author Delivery Specs with Engineering and Design. Maintain a product context repository as the durable record of your value stream — outside of Rally.
• AI-Fluent Product Work. Use Claude Desktop, Copilot, and other AI tools daily — for discovery synthesis, spec drafting, prototype generation, and context management. Write prompts as a core skill. Build or adapt custom skills for product workflows. Bring curiosity about designing AI-powered dealer capabilities, not just AI-assisted personal productivity.
• Data-Driven Decisions. Anchor recommendations in data from sources like Amplitude, Tableau, and Snowflake. Understand what the data represents and use it to inform your point of view. Monitor product performance post-launch, identify optimization opportunities, and drive continuous improvement against defined KPIs.
• Adoption and Go-to-Market. Own a time horizon that extends beyond deployment. Define what complete adoption looks like, build rollout plans with performance managers and support teams, and coordinate with Sales, Marketing, and training on launch readiness. Track outcomes against measurable criteria.
• Stakeholder Engagement. Serve as a senior liaison across product, engineering, operations, and business leadership. Represent customer and dealer priorities to influence product and technology decisions. Surface status, risks, and wins without being asked — lead with the headline, bring a recommended path when something is off track.

What We Look For:

• Discovery practice. Experienced in moving problems from ambiguity to a solid product recommendation — with the judgment to know when to stop exploring and commit. You've done this in environments where the customer's stated request is rarely the full problem.
• Roadmap and prioritization. You can articulate what you built, what you didn't, and why — connected to outcomes and customer pain points. You've owned a roadmap, led PI Planning, and made tradeoffs stick under competing stakeholder pressure.
• Tangible AI fluency. Claude Desktop, Microsoft Copilot, or equivalent are part of how you work today. Prompt writing is practiced and continuously improving. You've customized your own workflows. You have a point of view on designing AI-supported features for dealers and understand optimizing for token cost.
• Data literacy. Comfortable pulling and interpreting data from Amplitude, Tableau, and Snowflake to form and support product decisions — without a data translator or relying on others to build KPI dashboards.
• Stakeholder influence. You build alignment by leading with evidence and framing tradeoffs clearly. You've influenced senior leadership and navigated competing priorities across matrixed teams.
• Ownership. You bring curiosity, drive for your product area, and options for where to go next. Bias for action — you don't wait to be told what matters.

Required Qualifications:

• A bachelor's degree in a related discipline and 4 years of experience in a related field. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as a master's degree and 2 years of experience; a Ph.D. and 1 year of experience; or 12 years of experience in related field with no degree.
• 5+ years in software product management
• Demonstrated end-to-end discovery ownership: problem identification through validated solution direction
• Working proficiency with AI tools (Claude Desktop, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent); prompt writing is a practiced skill
• Familiarity with GitHub Enterprise as a product artifact workspace
• Comfort with Amplitude, Snowflake, or equivalent for evidence-based prioritization
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to influence cross-functional teams
• Experience in a CAFe, AIT, or scaled agile delivery environment preferred
• Experience in automotive retail, dealer software, or adjacent B2B SaaS preferred but not required.

Candidates local to Austin, TX or willing to relocate to Austin, TX will be considered for this role.

We are unable to consider candidates who require visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Drug Testing

To be employed in this role, you'll need to clear a pre-employment drug test. Cox Automotive does not currently administer a pre-employment drug test for marijuana for this position. However, we are a drug-free workplace, so the possession, use or being under the influence of drugs illegal under federal or state law during work hours, on company property and/or in company vehicles is prohibited.

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.

About Us

Through groundbreaking technology and a commitment to stellar experiences for drivers and dealers alike, Cox Automotive employees are transforming the way the world buys, owns, sells – or simply uses – cars. Cox Automotive employees get to work on iconic consumer brands like Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book and industry-leading dealer-facing companies like vAuto and Manheim, all while enjoying the people-centered atmosphere that is central to our life at Cox. Benefits of working at Cox may include health care insurance (medical, dental, vision), retirement planning (401(k)), and paid days off (sick leave, parental leave, flexible vacation/wellness days, and/or PTO). For more details on what benefits you may be offered, visit our benefits page. Cox is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer – All qualified applicants/employees will receive consideration for employment without regard to that individual's age, race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, ethnicity, citizenship, or any other characteristic protected by law. Cox provides reasonable accommodations when requested by a qualified applicant or employee with disability, unless such accommodations would cause an undue hardship. EOE, including disability/vets