Vice President of Product Development and Engineering

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 seeking a confidential VP of Product Development/Engineering in the Chicagoland area. The role combines engineering and product leadership across hardware, firmware, embedded systems, software and product strategy to drive a proactive, strategic product organization.

The incoming leader will strengthen product management, align with Sales, and leverage AI to improve velocity, quality and innovation, while maintaining hands-on credibility with engineers and executives.

Qualifications

• Leading cross-functional teams for hardware, firmware, embedded systems development.
• Experience driving product management alongside engineering.
• Proven track record in AI-enabled product development and velocity.
• Background in modernizing legacy architectures and roadmapping.

Responsibilities

• Strengthen the Product Management voice-of-customer, ownership, prioritization and roadmaps.
• Forge tighter alignment between Product, Engineering and Sales to inform roadmaps.
• Lead AI-enabled development across product, coding, testing and documentation.
• Engage with customers and executives, delivering commercial technology produits.

Job description

CONFIDENTIAL RETAINED SEARCH – VP OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT/ENGINEERING

Location: Chicagoland Area - Hybrid

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

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

This is a confidential retained search for a VP of Product Development/Engineering 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 both Engineering and Product Management, spanning hardware, firmware, embedded technology, software and overall product strategy.

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:

• Hardware, Firmware, embedded systems
• Software and device management
• IoT, RF, wireless or adjacent technologies
• Security and authentication
• Product Management
• Legacy architecture modernization

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, technically credible VP of Engineering, VP of Product Development, Head of Engineering or similar product-development executive who can comfortably engage with engineers and architecture while also working directly with customers, Sales 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.