The Director of Product is an experienced practitioner who leads delivery on complex product engagements for automotive OEM and Tier-1 clients, ensuring teams have the definition and clarity they need to execute. This role moves fluidly across strategic product management and the full product development lifecycle from discovery and scoping through execution, launch, and iteration- bringing a systems-minded perspective that makes product strategy concrete and buildable in a highly regulated, program-driven automotive environment.
They have command-level fluency with AI tools and applying them across research, competitive and market analysis, documentation, requirements analysis, and workflow management. Beyond delivering a project, this Director helps clients build AI-ready delivery capacity while operating as a trusted, embedded member of the client's product organization rather than an outside vendor.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Lead technical and product discovery on active automotive engagements, surfacing user needs, business requirements, platform constraints, and integration realities that shape scope and sequencing
- Conduct competitive and market analysis and user research specific to automotive/mobility experiences, and translate findings into clear, buildable requirements
- Develop and maintain client-facing product roadmaps, translating strategic goals into phased, feasible plans that reflect technical realities, OEM program timelines, and a coherent long-term vision
- Represent the auto product roadmap and team in org-wide meetings, acting as a core member of the client's product organization
- Own backlog prioritization and scope trade-off decisions, working with clients, partners, and engineering leads to make deliberate, impact-driven choices against critical internal and partner-facing timelines
- Define release criteria, quality benchmarks, and post-launch feedback mechanisms; use data from prior phases to inform requirements and improve delivery quality across iterations
- Own end-to-end product delivery, writing product documentation, user stories, and acceptance criteria to a level of detail engineering and design can build from directly
- Lead sprint ceremonies, manage cross-functional coordination, and keep engineering, design, research, and client/partner stakeholders aligned and moving day to day
- Serve as the primary product point of contact for external partners (OEM and Tier-1 counterparts)
- Support business development with product input
- Identify and implement process improvements, including AI-assisted workflows, that improve team throughput, and advise clients on adopting similar practices to build more autonomous delivery teams
WHAT YOU'LL NEED
- 8+ years of experience in product management roles, with a track record of owning complex engagements end-to-end
- Automotive product & interfaces background strongly preferred, including at least one automotive product taken to launch and working knowledge of how OEM and Tier-1 programs run
- Deep working knowledge of agile delivery methodologies and product artifacts — epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, functional specs, and process documentation — written to a level of detail engineering and design can build from
- Fluency in CMSes, platform architecture, API documentation, and integration planning sufficient to partner credibly with engineering leads on scoping and trade-off decisions
- Experience with competitive/market analysis and user research, and the ability to translate both into clear requirements
- Strong client and partner communication skills: comfortable managing scope conversations, reporting delivery progress, acting as the main product contact for external partners, and navigating difficult trade-offs with senior stakeholders
- Command-level fluency with AI tools for research, prototyping, documentation, requirements analysis, and workflow, with informed judgment about where they improve throughput and where precision still requires human review
- Experience mentoring junior team members and contributing to technical scoping in new business contexts; collaborative instinct across design, engineering, and research disciplines
- Self-starter who can hit the ground running on day one, operating as a core member of the product organization rather than an outside resource
ABOUT US
Born in 2001, Code and Theory is a digital-first creative agency that sits at the center of creativity and technology. We pride ourselves on not only solving consumer and business problems, but also helping to establish new capabilities for our clients. With a global client roster of Fortune 100s and start-ups alike, we crave the hardest problems to solve. We have teams distributed across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. The Code and Theory global network of agencies is growing and includes Kettle, Instrument, Left Field Labs, Create Group, Current, and TrueLogic.
Striving never to be pigeonholed, we work across every major category: from tech to CPG, financial services to travel & hospitality, government and education to media and publishing. We value the collaboration with our client partners, including but not limited to Adidas, Amazon, Con Edison, Diageo, EY, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lenovo, Marriott, Mars, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, and TikTok.
The Code and Theory network is comprised of nearly 2,000 people with 50% engineers and 50% creative talent. We’re always on the lookout for smart, driven, and forward-thinking people to join our team.
The compensation range for this role is $170,000 – $200,000 and spans multiple levels. We're open to hiring at the level that best matches the right candidate's experience. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, budget, and location.