[Hiring] Product Operations & Governance Manager @ST Engineering iDirect

Role Description

The Principal Product Operations Manager leads portfolio-level governance across product platforms, strategic subcontractors, lifecycle transitions, and modernization or migration activity. The role connects Product Management, Engineering, Quality, System Architecture, TAC/Support, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, Procurement, Legal, Sales, PMO/Programs, and customer-facing teams so that scope, functional ownership, dependencies, milestones, acceptance evidence, risks, and decisions remain explicit.

The successful candidate combines the operating rigor of a senior program leader with Principal-level systems thinking. This is an enterprise-governance assignment—not day-to-day project management. Subcontractor project managers and internal functional leaders remain accountable for producing and executing their plans. The Principal POM reviews, challenges, integrates, governs, escalates, and communicates the enterprise view while improving frameworks when recurring execution patterns demand it.

Responsibilities

• Integrate and challenge the plans, status, risks, dependencies, decisions, and commitments produced by subcontractor PMs and accountable internal functions.
• Maintain the enterprise plan of record and leadership view; drive closure of cross-functional gaps without taking over day-to-day project management.
• Serve as the enterprise governance interface to subcontractor program and project managers.
• Review and challenge supplier reports, performance, risks, obligations, milestones, acceptance evidence, changes, and forecasts.
• Integrate enterprise reporting and support SOW updates or negotiations with Procurement, Finance, Legal, Engineering, and Product.
• Embed modernization and migration into normal lifecycle and portfolio governance.
• Lead cross-functional planning, readiness, dependency, decision, and risk integration while accountable functions define and execute product, technical, deployment, logistics, training, support, cutover, and customer deliverables.
• Provide cross-functional portfolio governance for Dialog, PEBL, and D9100.
• Integrate the functional view of sustaining work, defects, obsolescence, supportability, customer commitments, modernization, migration, and EOL/EOS.
• Coordinate evidence-based readiness through INIT, CAP, Release, and EOL stages.
• Integrate scope, schedule, effort, assumptions, and dependencies into an approved baseline; assure that changes are visible, assessed, approved, and traceable.
• Maintain an enterprise risk, issue, dependency, and decision view.
• Escalate early with a clear thesis, business impact, options, recommendation, owner, and required decision date.
• Ensure Jira, Jama, SPM, Confluence/SharePoint, Power BI, and applicable ERP/CRM records support a reliable execution picture.
• Treat material discrepancies as execution defects; partner with system owners rather than assuming solution-architecture ownership.
• Identify recurring execution failure modes and translate them into measurable improvements to templates, cadences, controls, KPIs, and handoffs.
• Recommend framework changes through POG governance and drive adoption across assigned programs.

Qualifications

• Typically 10+ years of progressively responsible experience in product operations, technical program management, supplier governance, portfolio execution, or a comparable cross-functional leadership role; equivalent demonstrated experience is accepted in place of a specific degree path.
• Demonstrated ownership of complex programs spanning multiple functions, geographies, platforms, or customer deployments in a technical product environment.
• Direct experience developing or governing statements of work, deliverables, milestones, acceptance criteria, change controls, negotiations, and supplier performance.
• Demonstrated experience leading modernization, migration, deployment, lifecycle-transition, sustaining, or EOL/EOS programs with material operational or customer impact.
• Strong command of integrated planning, baseline and change control, dependency management, risk governance, decision traceability, and executive reporting.
• Ability to challenge incomplete inputs constructively, influence without direct authority, and create accountability across senior functional stakeholders.
• Professional fluency in English for global executive, supplier, and contractual communication; ability to collaborate across India, Europe, the Americas, and other time zones as required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in telecommunications, SATCOM, aerospace/defense, networking, SaaS, or another complex technical-product environment.
• Experience with globally distributed Engineering and supplier teams, including work across India or Brazil.
• Working knowledge of Agile, SAFe, waterfall, and hybrid delivery models, with judgment to apply controls appropriate to the work.
• Familiarity with Jira, Jama, SPM or comparable product-data systems, Confluence/SharePoint, Power BI, ERP/CRM platforms, and structured requirements traceability.
• Experience improving governance, KPI definitions, operating cadences, or cross-program execution frameworks at scale.