Manufacturing and Industrial Edge Product Manager

At SUSE, we believe every business is on a journey of digital transformation, and that transformation can be enhanced and accelerated by open-source innovation. SUSE products and our processes are designed around the collective wisdom of our customers, community, partners, and employees. SUSE Product Managers have end-to-end product and solution responsibility – developing the vision, advocating with internal teams, and communicating to the market. With this position you will own the business plan and product go to market strategy for the manufacturing and industrial edge market; including definition of target market, identification of the primary use cases, validation and prioritization of product requirements, creation of customer user stories used to drive an agile development process, revenue projections and in coordination with other functions market awareness and sales enablement.

The SUSE Edge Business Unit provides edge customers with a fully integrated and purpose-built cloud native edge solution stack.

The role of the Manufacturing and Industrial Edge Product Manager requires an individual who combines experience with the typical requirements and buying practices of the industrial and manufacturing market with a knowledge of Kubernetes and cloud native open-source infrastructure software. As the Manufacturing and Industrial Edge Product Manager, you will construct the manufacturing and industrial edge product strategy leveraging existing SUSE products such as SUSE Rancher, SUSE Linux Micro, SUSE Longhorn, SUSE NeuVector, K3s, RKE2 and SUSE Manager with additional functionality developed by the SUSE Edge Business Unit specifically for the manufacturing and industrial edge market.

Responsibilities and Duties:

Be the subject matter expert on the manufacturing and industrial edge market:

• Be the recognized manufacturing and industrial edge market expert and a resource for engineering, customer support, sales, and partner alliance teams.
• Meet frequently with customers and partners to share the details of the manufacturing and industrial edge development roadmap and solicit feedback to ensure SUSE provides a complete solution and service offering for this market.
• Work with SUSE solution architects, support, and product engineering to find solutions to customer needs within existing product capabilities.
• Track the manufacturing and industrial edge competitive market to identify and evaluate relevant developments.
• Provide manufacturing and industrial edge content for quarterly business reviews.
• Collaborate with product marketing on product positioning and messaging.
• Communicate regularly via webinars, blogs, and presentations.
• Support content creation to publicize new features and functionality in the context of product launch activities.
• Ensure product documentation describes the capabilities of the manufacturing and industrial edge product features.

Own the SUSE manufacturing and industrial edge business plan and roadmap:

• Build the manufacturing and industrial edge product business plan including market segment definition and prioritization, sizing estimates and the go to market plans needed to address those target markets.
• Define product requirements and priorities for each manufacturing and industrial edge product release and work closely with engineering to align on these priorities.
• Understand and communicate technical trade-offs and drive the decision-making process.
• Define and track relevant metrics to monitor the health of the business and regularly report progress to senior management.
• Have the right blend of diplomacy and decisiveness to constantly balance constraints and resources, as well as juggle priorities and tasks.

Required Qualifications and Skills:

• 5 years of product management experience.
• In-depth understanding of the manufacturing and industrial edge market including predictive maintenance, yield optimization, asset utilization and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
• Knowledge of container management and cloud native computing technologies.
• Familiarity with the Linux operating system.
• Strong communications, presentation, and interpersonal skills.
• Self-motivated, able to handle ambiguity and work independently.
• Strong personal leadership, organizational and project/program management skills.
• Demonstrated analytical skills and business acumen.
• Organizational awareness with demonstrated collaboration skills including the ability to work cross functionally and with different levels of management.

Desired Qualifications and Skills:

• Master of Business Administration degree.
• Understanding of modern, microservices-based architectural concepts and technologies.
• Familiarity with telematics and sensor data acquisition and aggregation.
• Experience with software methodologies to enhance software security and reduce security vulnerabilities.
• Experience with the open-source business model.

Location: Flexible locations

in Europe and Americas where we have legal entity