Director of Product - Austin - Channel Fusion

Description

Director of Product

The Opportunity

Channel Fusion powers channel marketing programs for enterprise brands—enabling manufacturers to invest marketing dollars through their dealer and distributor networks with full accountability, compliance, and measurable growth. Our platform manages billions of dollars in channel marketing investments across programs ranging from co-op advertising to dealer incentives to rewards and rebates.

We're at an inflection point. Our proven platform serves enterprise clients including major automotive, agricultural, and insurance brands. Now we're executing a dual transformation—strengthening our core business (Transformation A) while simultaneously building the next generation of our platform (Transformation B). We need a product leader who has navigated this kind of strategic tension before.

This role reports to the CEO and partners as a peer with the Director of Tech Solutions Lab (TSL). You'll own the product vision, roadmap, and client-facing product organization—while TSL owns engineering execution and platform operations. Together, you'll define what Channel Fusion becomes.

Product Vision

"Every dollar invested in the channel produces accountable, compliant, and measurable growth."

This isn't just a tagline—it's the product thesis. Our clients are marketers making investment decisions. They need to know: How was my investment allocated? Did it comply with program rules? What growth did it generate? Your job is to make Channel Fusion the definitive answer to those questions.

What You'll Own

Product Strategy & Roadmap

• Define and communicate the product vision that bridges our current platform strength with our future state
• Own the integrated product roadmap—balancing client-driven enhancements, platform capabilities, and transformation initiatives
• Navigate the dual transformation: protect and extend the revenue-generating core while incubating next-generation capabilities
• Make hard prioritization decisions—this platform has been shaped by years of client customization; you'll need to find the product within the projects
• Establish product discipline — create the artifacts, rituals, and decision frameworks that turn ad-hoc delivery into repeatable product management: specification templates, acceptance criteria standards, prioritization rubrics, and roadmap communication cadences

Client-Facing Product Organization

• Lead the Solutions Consultant team—technical product managers who translate client needs into specifications while maintaining platform discipline
• Partner closely with Forward Deployed Engineers (who report to TSL) to ensure product and engineering stay aligned at the client interface
• Be the voice that can say "no" constructively—redirect bespoke requests toward platform capabilities, collaborate on innovative solutions or carefully scope custom work
• Engage directly with strategic enterprise accounts as the product authority—you'll need credibility in rooms with sophisticated marketing and finance leaders

AI as Capability Multiplier

• Serve as the organizational steward for AI adoption—not owning a separate "AI initiative" but ensuring AI thinking is woven into everything we build and how we work
• Identify where AI/automation creates genuine leverage: processing efficiency, anomaly detection, compliance monitoring, client insights
• Maintain practical ROI discipline—AI should solve real problems, not chase hype
• Influence and enable AI adoption across teams; make it as natural as electricity, not a special project

Partner with TSL on Delivery

• Work as a true peer with the Director of TSL—you own "what" and "why"; they own "how" and "when"
• Provide product context and prioritization input while respecting engineering's ownership of technical approach and resource allocation
• Jointly navigate the tension between stabilization work and new capability development

What You Bring

Required Experience

• 7+ years in product leadership with demonstrated ownership of product vision, roadmap, and go-to-market for B2B platforms
• Fintech, marketing technology, or investment platform experience —you understand products where customers are making financial decisions and need accountability for their spend
• Experience productizing services — you've been inside an agency, consultancy, or custom software shop and helped transition from "we'll build what you ask" to "here's our platform, configured for you"
• Dual transformation experience —you've successfully managed the tension between optimizing a core business and building new capabilities (startup-within-enterprise or enterprise going through reinvention)
• Both startup and enterprise customer experience —you've built products for scrappy early customers AND navigated the complexity of large enterprise accounts
• Technical fluency —you can engage credibly with engineers, understand architectural tradeoffs, and evaluate technical feasibility without needing to write code yourself

Critical Capabilities

• Product discipline in a services-influenced environment —ability to find repeatable product value in a portfolio shaped by custom client work
• Executive communication —you'll present to C-level clients and need to speak the language of marketing investment, compliance, and measurable outcomes
• Data platform intuition —our platform processes billions of transactions; you need comfort with high-volume data systems, even if you're not building them
• AI/ML literacy —practical understanding of where AI creates value and where it doesn't; ability to separate signal from hype
• Comfortable with ambiguity —this is a transformation, not an optimization; you'll need to make decisions with incomplete information

First 90 Days

• Deep discovery: Understand the current platform capabilities, client portfolio, and the business model that drives revenue
• Build the partnership: Establish the working rhythm with the Director of TSL—define decision rights, communication cadence, and how you'll navigate disagreements
• Meet the clients: Engage directly with strategic accounts to understand their real needs, pain points, and where Channel Fusion creates (or fails to create) value
• Assess the team: Evaluate the Solutions Consultant function—understand capabilities, gaps, and what's needed to build a true product organization
• Launch the dual transformation: Develop a clear framework for how we'll protect the core while building the future—launching an initial product that the organization can rally around

The Environment

What you're walking into: A platform with real enterprise traction and significant technical customizations. A team that has operated in service mode and needs to learn product discipline. Clients who have had an agency partner for years and will need clarity on the benefits of evolving towards a product partnership. A dual transformation that requires holding two competing priorities simultaneously.

Why your impact will be meaningful: The opportunity to shape a platform at a genuine inflection point. A CEO who understands product and is committed to this transformation. A market (channel marketing) that is underserved by modern SaaS. And a mission—accountable, compliant, measurable growth—that actually matters to marketers making real investment decisions.