Director, Product Development - Enhanced Water & Connected Devices

Quench USA; United States; À distance; USD 180 000 - 240 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

Culligan Quench seeks a Director of Product Development - Enhanced Water & Connected Devices to lead product strategy across firmware, cloud, data, and IoT for Twist and future products.

The role owns connected-product requirements, governance, and prioritization, aligning engineering, security, data, and the Center of Excellence to deliver measurable outcomes.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in product-management, platform, software, IoT, or connected-device roles.
• Ownership of product lifecycle from discovery to lifecycle decisions.
• Experience across software, firmware, cloud, data, APIs and UX.

Responsabilités

• Own Twist product strategy, roadmap and long-range vision.
• Define feature sets, requirements and release sequencing across generations.
• Lead governance and prioritization with cross-functional partners.
• Manage firmware, cloud and connected-platform requirements and roadmaps.
• Define metrics, KPIs and post-launch measurement for connected products.

Connaissances

Product Management

IoT

Leadership

Firmware

Cloud

Data analytics

Formation

Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience

Outils

Cloud platforms

Description du poste

About Culligan Quench

Culligan Quench’s purpose is to impact people’s lives and improve the earth by helping to eliminate the 500 million plastic bottles consumed each year. We play a front-line role in the battle against single-use plastic water bottles by delivering on-demand filtered water solutions to more than 120,000 healthy and environmentally conscious customers across North America. Our bottle-free water coolers, ice machines, sparkling water dispensers and coffee brewers purify the existing water supply, providing an endless supply of clean water and water-based beverages for a fixed monthly fee, typically under a long term bundled service and rental subscription agreement. Culligan Quench has grown from a small regional company to an international leader that had a successful NYSE public offering in 2016 and is now a strategic company owned by private equity backed Culligan. Headquartered in King of Prussia, PA, Quench has more than 1,600 team members operating out of more than 90 locations across North America and Puerto Rico. For more information visit https://quench.culligan.com/

About Culligan

There’s nothing more fundamental to life on Earth than water. At Culligan, we believe transforming water can transform the world. That's why we offer expert water services and industry-leading solutions globally. Local Culligan teams deliver better drinking water to people at work, at home and on the go. With expertise across service, science and sustainability, Culligan turns water you can live with into water you can love. For more information visit www.culligan.com.

Values: 5Cs

Culligan as One

Customers come first

Commitment to Innovation

Courage to do what's right

Consistently deliver exceptional results

The Position

The Director, Product Development - Enhanced Water & Connected Devices is a senior product and platform leadership role at the intersection of product strategy, software, firmware, cloud infrastructure, IoT data, connected-device experiences, and cross-functional execution. Twist is the immediate priority, including the installed fleet and the next generations of countertop and freestanding products. The longer-term mandate is to establish repeatable connected-product practices that can support Purity, ice machines, and future connected products.

This role is the business owner for the connected-product layer. The Director defines the problems to solve, why they matter, the outcomes required, and how work should be prioritized. Product Development & Engineering and technical partners retain technical design and implementation authority within their disciplines. Success requires aligning these groups through clear requirements, governance, decisions, and measurable outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

1. Twist Product Strategy and Roadmap

• Own the Twist unit product-family vision, product strategy, and long-range roadmap across current and future generations.
• Define and prioritize feature sets, software and user-experience requirements, market opportunities, business cases, pilots, release sequencing, and lifecycle decisions.
• Provide product requirements and functional specifications that inform hardware, electronics, firmware, cloud, and system-development decisions.
• Partner with Enhanced Water Operations leader and Sales, Marketing, Service, Operations, and Finance on launch readiness, channel needs, pricing and packaging inputs, enablement, and performance measurement.
• Use customer, market, fleet, service and competitive evidence to make roadmap decisions and communicate tradeoffs to leadership.

2. Firmware, Cloud, and Connected-Platform Ownership

• Own business and product requirements for firmware across supported Twist generations and for the cloud capabilities that enable connected experiences.
• Lead governance of the DTI-to-Novus transition and establish effective day-to-day ways of working with Novus and the Culligan Center of Excellence.
• Coordinate support plans for parallel Twist 2.0 and 3.0 firmware and software environments, including prioritization, sprint alignment, testing, acceptance, release sequencing, deployment and sustaining.
• Own product-level prioritization of defects, remote diagnostics, alerts and notifications, APIs, on-device UX and accessibility, fleet-management capabilities and enterprise integrations.
• Establish visibility into roadmaps, capacity, dependencies, risks and release impacts across Culligan Quench, the Center of Excellence and partner teams.
• Partner with Engineering and security and data stakeholders on architecture implications, security requirements, data governance and technical tradeoffs.

3. IoT Data and Connected-Service Experiences

• Define the IoT data-product roadmap and the machine, fleet, customer, commercial and service insights required to improve business performance.
• Own requirements for fleet-health reporting, operator-facing analytics, customer-facing connected experiences, portals, enterprise data sharing and performance dashboards.
• Use dispense patterns, field-failure data, product usage and operational feedback to inform priorities and measurable success criteria.
• Define requirements for proactive service triggers and predictive-maintenance use cases in partnership with Service, Care, IT, Operations and Analytics.
• Ensure connected-product initiatives include adoption plans, business cases, workflow implications, training requirements and post-launch measurement.

4. Governance, Partner Leadership, and Ways of Working

• Establish a common operating cadence across Product, Engineering, the Center of Excellence, Novus, Service, Operations, Commercial and other partners.
• Create clear decision rights, requirements-review practices, roadmap governance, sprint and release touchpoints, risk escalation and executive reporting.
• Align delivery priorities with available capacity and enterprise priorities and build evidence-based business cases when initiatives require broader organizational change or investment.
• Serve as a senior escalation point for connected-product requirements, partner performance, release risks and cross-functional tradeoffs.
• Build trusted relationships across Culligan Quench, Culligan and external partners while maintaining accountability for outcomes.

5. Future Capability and Team Leadership

• Define the future-state connected-product operating model for 2028 and beyond, including what Culligan Quench should own directly and what should remain with the Center of Excellence or external partners.
• Develop the capability roadmap for dedicated firmware, cloud, data, quality assurance and testing, UX and technical-product resources as scale and business cases justify investment.
• Help recruit, onboard, coach and lead future team members and establish career paths and standards for connected-product work.
• Extend common connected-device practices across Twist, Purity, ice machines and future products without creating category-specific silos.
• Promote reusable capabilities, including telemetry standards, diagnostics, alerts, integration patterns, release governance, field-feedback loops and lifecycle discipline.

Success Measures

• Predictable firmware, cloud and connected-product delivery against an agreed roadmap.
• Stable support and disciplined release management across multiple product and firmware generations.
• Improved transparency, prioritization and accountability across Novus, the Center of Excellence, Engineering and business teams.
• Roadmap initiatives supported by clear business cases, defined KPIs and post-launch measurement.
• Connected-device capabilities that improve customer experience, service effectiveness, product reliability, adoption or recurring-revenue performance.
• A credible multi-year capability and talent plan for scaling connected products across the portfolio.

Experience and Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressively responsible product-management, platform, software, IoT, or connected-device experience, including leadership at the director or senior-director level.
• Demonstrated ownership across the product lifecycle, from customer discovery and business cases through requirements, delivery, launch, measurement, sustaining and lifecycle decisions.
• Experience working across software, firmware, cloud, connected hardware, data products, UX, APIs, fleet management or operational platforms.
• Ability to translate business and customer needs into clear product requirements, priorities, acceptance criteria and measurable outcomes.
• Experience leading external development partners, shared technical organizations or complex matrixed delivery models.
• Strong executive communication, structured problem-solving, stakeholder leadership and comfort operating through ambiguity.
• Demonstrated ability to build teams, operating models, governance practices or organizational capabilities over time.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience; advanced degree is helpful but not required.

Leadership Attributes

• Business ownership with technical credibility
• Bias for evidence, clarity and measurable outcomes
• Collaborative leadership without loss of accountability
• Comfort influencing across organizational boundaries
• Pragmatism in balancing ambition, capacity and enterprise priorities
• Commitment to customer experience, product quality and scalable operations

Equal Opportunity Employer

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