Associate Product Operations Manager

The Team:

Product Operations is a team in our Product & Engineering organization reporting into our VP Product Strategy & Operations. We drive the development and execution of strategic initiatives, operational processes, and cross-functional alignment to optimize product performance and scalability. 

We collaborate closely with product, engineering, GTM, and other department leaders across four pillars:

1. thought leadership (e.g. product vision & strategy, operating principles)
2. long-term strategic planning (e.g. OKRs, product reviews)
3. change management (e.g. cross-functional alignment, operational frameworks for product launches, customer feedback, business opportunity evaluation)
4. critical project management (leading high-impact initiatives)

The Product Operations Manager acts as trusted advisor and business partner to Product Management while working cross-functionally with engineering operations, go-to-market and many more departments in the rest of the company (Marketing and Communications, Legal, InfoSec, Data Protection, Enablement, Partner Management, Customer Value Org, Finance, ...).

The Role:

You will be owning the execution of some of our most important processes in the product organization. You will be responsible for running these processes as well as for making them more efficient by e.g. implementing automations.

Our most important processes include:

• Feature request process = how we collect and manage requests for new product features from customers and our go-to-market (GTM) departments
• Product review meetings = how we drive alignment make decisions regarding the product's development, features, and direction
• Product launches = how we launch new products across 10+ departments including Technical Writing, Legal, Support, Enablement, Commercials, Marketing & Comms, and GTM Strategy

The work you’ll do:

As a starting point, you will own the execution of our feature request (FR) process. Based on your capacity and your progress, your scope can increase over time to owning the execution of other important topics at the top of this document.

The FR process allows our customers, partners, and our go-to-market (GTM) departments to submit requests for new product features to the Product & Engineering (PnE) team. The requests get regularly assessed by the PnE team. The FR process is a very important process for the company - it’s the most popular feedback channel to the PnE teams and helps the product managers in making better roadmap decisions by getting more insight into what customers need and are asking for.

Your job is twofold. On the one hand, you are responsible for the day-to-day operations and executing this process end-to-end. On the other hand, you are responsible for increasing the efficiency of executing the process, as an example by means of simplifying particular steps in the process, implementing automations, etc. Given that Celonis has more and more customers with more and more users who are requesting new features, continuously increasing the efficiency of the process is absolutely essential to maintain a great customer experience.

The FR process is a great way to get started with your career in the product organization - it allows you to gain broad and deep insights into the product, understand what customers need and why, and interact directly with our product managers to understand how they are qualifying those requests and how they use them to inform their roadmap.

Here are some specific jobs to be done in the current process that you will own:

• Analyze and qualify new incoming FRs to ensure information is complete and they are routed to the right product team
• Lead a weekly assessment council with senior colleagues from both the product and GTM organization to identify which of the incoming FRs are critical and require immediate attention
• Follow up with the product team on the critical requests to ensure a great customer experience for the evaluation of those
• Lead the quarterly FR assessment cycle so that the product teams evaluate all (also the non-critical) feature requests
• Govern all requests in the backlog continuously to ensure complete information and timely response
• Make the process execution more efficient, e.g. by implementing automations
• Monitor lead times for the FR assessment and response times to the customer and build analytics / dashboards as required

The qualifications you need:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Business & Analytics, or Data Science with Business Acumen.
• Strong communication skills with a keen interest in interacting with potential customers.
• Demonstrated ability to understand and empathize with customers' needs and challenges.
• Ability and willingness to tackle complex problems using both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
• A proactive attitude, taking initiative and driving tasks to completion.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills (including fluent English). German is a plus.

Soft skills we are looking for:

As a Product Operations Manager, you impact the way how the Product Management operates internally as well as with external stakeholders. To make this happen, we need change makers in our team. Succeeding in this role requires some key competencies:

• Ownership: You are a changemaker and have a very high level of ownership. If you don’t fix a problem, no one will. You are a strong driver of your projects, very proactive, and make things happen.
• People: You have a very high level of empathy. You convince others along the way. You get along well with people, lead without authority, and engage a cross-functional group of people to work towards a joint goal.
• Product mindset: You are the product manager for product managers and have a strong product mindset. You discover and prioritize new initiatives based on our customers’ needs and come up with scalable solutions. At the same time, you don’t create processes for the sake of process, but for the sake of creating value for your internal customers. You break down bigger problems into feasible solutions and milestones. You think strategically and act long-term (= what are the next big things we need to improve in the org) while being pragmatic, hands-on, and delivering quick wins on the way. 
• Project management: Excellent project management skills are the baseline. Most of the processes we implement are cross-departmental (e.g. the product launch management process runs across 40 departments). You cut through complexity and structure a complex project into its major building blocks. You create the best project setup and governance to achieve success.