Vice President of Product Development

StevenDouglas; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 250,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health/Dental

Vision

Short/Long-Term Disability

401K

Job summary

StevenDouglas is conducting a confidential retained search for a VP of Product Development in the Chicagoland area. This executive will oversee product management across hardware, firmware, embedded software and overall strategy, reporting directly to the President/CEO.

The ideal candidate combines hands-on engineering insight with strategic leadership, builds a proactive product organization, and drives AI-enabled development, voice-of-customer processes, and cross-functional partnerships with

Qualifications

• Requires senior product development leader with hardware, firmware, embedded software and overall strategy experience.
• Hands-on engineering insight paired with strategic leadership and cross-functional influence.
• Experience building voice-of-customer processes, roadmaps and strong partnership between Product, Engineering and Sales.
• AI-enabled product development experience is highly desired and practical, not just theoretical.

Responsibilities

• Lead a multidisciplinary product organization spanning hardware, firmware, embedded tech and software.
• Own the product strategy, roadmap and prioritization aligned with company goals.
• Partner with Engineering and Sales to translate customer needs into the product plan.
• Drive AI integration across development to improve velocity, quality and innovation.

Skills

Executive leadership

Product leadership

AI experience

Engineering background

Product strategy

Job description

CONFIDENTIAL RETAINED SEARCH – VP OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Location: Chicagoland Area - Hybrid - Relocation Available

Compensation: $250-300K base + Bonus + LTI (TBD)

Benefits: Health/Dental, Vision, ST/LT Disability, 401K and more

Relocation: Available

This is a confidential retained search for a VP of Product Development for an established technology company entering an important next stage of growth, innovation and product development.

This is a unique executive opportunity because the incoming leader will have responsibility for Product Management and is currently a product person spanning hardware, firmware, embedded technology, software and overall product strategy. Prior engineering experience excellent to have. No pure marketing candidates will be considered.

The engineering organization is on a strong foundation. The bigger opportunity for this executive is to build upon that foundation while helping the company evolve from being exceptionally responsive to customer requests into a more proactive, strategic and innovative product organization.

We are looking for a product-company engineering executive who has led multidisciplinary teams in environments involving several of the following:

• Executive Leader that can reports into the President/CEO directly.
• Product DEVICE experience.
• Product Leadership of a staff of 6.
• Engineering - Prior Engineer that can challenge the software engineering team and understand their point of view.
• AI Experience (VERY IMPORTANT): Person that can bring REAL AI cutting edge (examples of imbedding AI in the code, Agentic Agents, Modeling areas for a Product device organization.

A major part of the mandate will be strengthening the Product Management function by establishing stronger voice-of-customer, product ownership, prioritization and roadmap disciplines. This leader will also build a tighter partnership between Product, Engineering and Sales to ensure customer needs inform the roadmap without allowing individual customer requests to dictate product strategy.

AI will be another important component of the role.

The organization is already introducing AI-assisted development across coding, testing, documentation and engineering workflows. We are looking for a leader who understands how to use AI practically to improve engineering velocity, quality and innovation—not someone who simply talks about AI at a strategic level.

The ideal candidate will likely be a hands-on leader, VP of Product Development, Head of Product or senior director of product or similar product-development executive who can comfortably engage with engineers and architecture while also working directly with customers, sales/marketing and executive leadership.

This is not an enterprise IT or CIO position. We are looking for someone who has built and delivered commercial technology products.

The opportunity is to inherit a solid engineering foundation and lead the company's next chapter of product strategy, innovation, modernization and AI-enabled product development.