[Hiring] VP of Innovation @QAD, Inc.

Role Description

Building What Manufacturing Does Next

Are you a manufacturing technology executive who thrives on running a live product roadmap with one hand and inventing the next generation of shop floor AI with the other? Have you led teams that ship reliable software today while placing the bets that define tomorrow?

Redzone is seeking a VP of Innovation to own both our Integration Platform and Analytics product roadmap, and to lead Horizon 3 innovation for the Connected Workforce Platform as we scale globally across thousands of always-on manufacturing environments.

Who We Are: Empowering Frontline Workers to Win the Day

• Manufacturing has been transformed by technology everywhere except where it matters most: the people running the lines.
• Redzone changes that.
• We power communication, decision-making, and continuous improvement for frontline teams through:
• Real-time collaboration across operations, maintenance, and quality
• Intelligent software that anticipates issues, surfaces knowledge, and initiates action
• Proven coaching that drives sustained behavior change on the shop floor
• Our impact is measurable and repeatable:
• 26% productivity uplift in just 90 days
• 81% employee engagement
• 35% reduction in frontline turnover
• Today, more than 500,000 workers across 1,600+ factories on 6 continents rely on Redzone every shift.
• Backed by QAD, we are scaling with purpose and discipline.

The Opportunity: Own the Roadmap, Own What's Next

This is a dual mandate. You will own the product roadmap for Redzone's Integration Platform and Redzone Analytics, ensuring both continue to deliver reliable, scalable value to customers every shift.

At the same time, you will lead Horizon 3: Redzone's innovation engine for the ideas that don't exist yet.

• We expect 3-5 significant spikes per year. Most will fail fast and we will learn from them. The ones that don't, your team will help scale into the core product with speed and discipline.

What You Will Drive: Roadmap Execution and Frontier Innovation

• Own Redzone’s Integration Platform and Analytics Roadmap: Set priorities, sequence delivery, and ensure both products keep earning customer trust every release.
• Run Horizon 3 as a Portfolio, Not a Pet Project: Manage 3-5 spikes a year like an investment portfolio, kill the losers quickly, and double down on what works.
• Pioneer Visual and Physical AI on the Shop Floor: Build and prove AI that sees production efficiency, quality loss, changeover, downtime, and co-bot collaboration in real time.
• Convert Spikes Into Scaled Products: Build the handoff discipline that takes a winning Horizon 3 bet and gets it into the core roadmap fast.
• Lead Engineering Talent: Build and run teams that can ship a roadmap and run an innovation lab at the same time, without either one starving the other.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of IT/OT innovation experience in manufacturing, with a track record of shipping technology that changed how plants run
• Deep, hands-on experience with the industry's most common ERPs, including QAD, SAP, Oracle, MS Dynamics, and Infor
• Experience across MES, WMS, and connected worker platforms, and how they integrate with each other on the plant floor
• Proven experience leading both product and engineering teams, not just one or the other
• Direct experience building or deploying computer vision or physical AI in industrial or production environments
• Working knowledge of predictive maintenance and machine health approaches, including sensor data, IoT, and failure prediction models
• Familiarity with world models, digital twins, or simulation approaches applied to operational or industrial systems
• Comfortable running an innovation portfolio: setting hypotheses, killing bets quickly, and scaling the ones that prove out
• Executive presence to operate in Horizon 3 ambiguity in the morning and defend Horizon 1 roadmap commitments in the afternoon
• A pragmatic, no-drama operator who gets things done

Benefits

• Your health and well being are important to us at QAD. We provide programs that help you strike a healthy work-life balance.
• Opportunity to join a growing business, launching into its next phase of expansion and transformation.
• Collaborative culture of smart and hard-working people who support one another to get the job done.
• An atmosphere of growth and opportunity, where idea-sharing is always prioritized over level or hierarchy.