Forward Deployed Product Manager

Position Summary

Active Network is hiring a Forward Deployed Product Manager to lead one of our most strategic, single-customer engagements: a large, multi-module platform build on ACTIVE Works Endurance for a leading global endurance and obstacle-race event organizer and its family of brands. This is a builder’s role – equal parts embedded customer partner and hands‑on product owner.

Unlike a traditional portfolio PM, you’ll be dedicated to a single customer and deployed into their world. You’ll learn their business deeply, translate race-day realities into platform requirements, and drive a complex, phased roadmap to firm delivery milestones – an initial launch followed by a subsequent phase of enhancements. At the same time, you remain a rigorous product owner: writing epics and user stories, grooming the backlog, and coordinating the 2-3 development teams that turn the Statement of Work into shipped software.

• Embed & Partner
  • Be the forward‑deployed product lead – embed with the customer, build trust, and become their day‑to‑day product point of contact for the engagement.
  • Run discovery and requirements sessions directly with client stakeholders; surface the real need behind each ask, resolve ambiguity, and drive decisions.
  • Translate high‑level client objectives and race‑day operational realities into clear, measurable functional requirements.
  • Communicate relentlessly – progress, risks, trade‑offs, and evolving requirements – to both the customer and internal leadership throughout the project lifecycle.
• Own the Product & Backlog
  • Define, drive, and maintain the roadmap and backlog for the engagement across both delivery phases – an initial launch and a follow‑on phase of enhancements.
  • Write clear epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria from a detailed SOW spanning registration and checkout, payments and split settlement, dynamic pricing, race passes, transfers, on‑site/race‑day operations, identity/SSO, APIs/webhooks, and reporting.
  • Prioritize ruthlessly – sequence initial feature development and ongoing change requests against firm delivery deadlines.
  • Manage scope against the SOW – identify change requests, quantify their impact on estimate and timeline, and partner with account and delivery leadership to keep the engagement on track.
• Coordinate Delivery
  • Quarterback 2-3 development teams – align sprint goals, manage cross‑team dependencies, and orchestrate release sequencing across interdependent modules.
  • Prepare release objectives, milestones, and schedules with engineering, project management, design, and QA across all phases of development and launch.
  • Partner with Business Analysts and designers to ensure designs and builds meet documented requirements and customer needs.
  • Coordinate complex, cross‑functional areas – Stripe payments and split settlement, international/multi‑currency and VAT/GST, and data and reporting delivered via ACTIVE Hub.
  • Drive launch readiness – support UAT, cutover planning, and post‑launch stabilization for race‑day‑critical functionality.
  • Act as quarterback of the team and business owner for the overall solution.

• 4+ years in a product management or product owner role.
• Bachelor’s degree.
• Embedded / customer‑facing experience – prior forward‑deployed, solutions, professional‑services, or client‑embedded PM work strongly preferred.
• Proven track record of delivering complex software projects on time, on quality, and on budget.
• Demonstrated experience writing epics, user stories, and functional requirements in an agile environment.
• Experience coordinating multiple concurrent development teams and managing cross‑team dependencies.
• Exposure to SaaS and ecommerce product development; comfort with payments, APIs/webhooks, and third‑party integrations.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written – able to be the trusted face of the product to an external customer.
• Strong business acumen and the ability to translate client objectives into measurable requirements.
• Ability to communicate effectively with different personalities and roles (development, sales, support, customer, analyst, executive) and build strong relationships.

• Experience in registration, ticketing, events, or endurance/obstacle‑course racing (OCR).
• Familiarity with payment processing and split settlement (e.g., Stripe Connect).
• Experience with international commerce, multi‑currency, and VAT/GST compliance.
• Experience with BI/reporting platforms (Power BI, SQL‑based data warehouses).
• Pragmatic Institute (Pragmatic Marketing) Certified.
• B2B2C experience.
• A passion for endurance sports.