Product Manager

Mount Indie is seeking a Product manager to support a small but growing govcon here in San Diego. In this role, you set the product vision and ensure its execution. From shaping a multiyear roadmap to refining sprint-level stories, you translate mission needs, tech realities, and financial constraints into a coherent strategy-and drive cross-functional squads to deliver capability that matters. Your canvas spans market sensing, portfolio stewardship, agile backlog management, and go-to-market orchestration. You are both strategist and executor, toggling seamlessly between executive conversations and daily dev standups.

What you'll do:

Vision & Roadmap

• Define and maintain a 3-year product vision aligned to mission impact and revenue goals.
• Ideate new FTEN functions to support the warfighter (CRAD, IR&D, CRADA) and to increase FTEN market discrimination
• Maintain a rolling 12-month roadmap with quarterly KPI/KPPs; ensure PI objectives trace back to strategy.

Market & Mission Sensing

• Track DoW capability gaps, SBIR trends, and competitor moves; translate insights into differentiated features and value propositions.
• Engage directly with warfighters, acquisition offices, and partners to validate priorities.

Design Thinking

• Exposure to design thinking methods such as problem framing, ideation, prototyping, and iteration.
• Ability to translate user needs, feedback, or pain points into practical solutions or improvements.

Communication

• Ability to explain ideas clearly, ask thoughtful questions, and share updates in a timely manner.
• Comfortable adapting communication style for different audiences, such as peers, managers, customers, or cross-functional partners.
• Experience presenting ideas, documenting decisions, and summarizing complex information.

Financial Stewardship

• Own FTEN execution including cost and schedule of defined Initiatives/Epics/Jira Tickets
• Contributes to the cost model for sustainment and feature development
• Negotiate with Programs for Initiative definition and funding of Features within the Technology Jira Project
• Report progress to stakeholders (cost/schedule) based on execution metrics/tools (IMS, JIRA, etc). Recommend COAs based on progress metrics.
• Defend investment proposals and tradeoffs with executive staff.

Lifecycle & Compliance Governance

• Gatekeep epic approval through SAFe portfolio Kanban; shepherd MVPs from TRL 3 up.
• Ensure compliance with Cyber and Zero Trust accreditation requirements.
• Always have a functional fully featured FTEN system (Golden SUT)
• Governance of 15 FTE matrixed engineers spanning software, network, cyber, design, and systems.

Backlog & Iteration Execution

• Own and continuously groom the Team Backlog; balance new capability, tech debt, and compliance.
• Author crisp Initiatives/Epics/User stories with clear acceptance criteria; approve/reject based on Definition of Done.
• Lead iteration planning, daily syncs, demos, and acceptance to ensure alignment with PI objectives.

Stakeholder Alignment

• Run quarterly Product Syncs with executives, engineers, and finance leads.
• Serve as first-line liaison with Systems Engineering, Cybersecurity, QA, and Ops to resolve impediments.

Go-to-Market Enablement

• Align capture plans, pricing strategies, and demo assets with Growth & Capture (G&C).
• Empower teams to pitch coherent, compelling product stories that withstand source-selection scrutiny.

Continuous Improvement

• Track and act on metrics: velocity, lead time, defect escape rate, and portfolio ROI.
• Drive Inspect & Adapt actions across teams and trains.

We are looking for:

• Education: B.S. or higher in an engineering field (Computer Science, Software Engineering, Math, Physics, Electrical Engineering, or related technical discipline).
• Experience: 12+ years of progressive experience in technical leadership, program management, or technical product management.
• Mission-Driven Mindset - Passion for supporting national security missions and advancing warfighter capabilities through user-focused software design.
• Systems Thinking - Ability to translate complex operational requirements into scalable, maintainable software architectures.
• Agile Execution - Strong experience managing Agile development cycles, backlogs, and sprint planning within multi-disciplinary teams.
• People Development - Demonstrated success managing engineers and fostering career growth while driving accountability and performance.
• Cross-Functional Communication - Comfortable collaborating across engineering, product, and customer-facing teams to align vision and execution.
• Experience working with defense, aerospace, tactical communications, networking, C5ISR, edge compute, mission systems, or other mission-critical technology.
• Demonstrated ability to translate customer and operator needs into product requirements, roadmaps, and execution priorities.
• Clearance & Citizenship: * US Citizen.

Nice to have:

• Active US Secret or Top Secret clearance.
• Strong technical fluency with IP networking, software systems, RF communications, tactical data links, distributed systems, or network management concepts.
• Experience with tactical radios, MANETs, SATCOM, datalinks, software-defined networking, network orchestration, edge compute, or disconnected/degraded/intermittent/limited-bandwidth environments.
• Experience with AI/ML-enabled network optimization, autonomous network management, or decision-support tools.
• Experience with productizing capabilities that began as customer-specific engineering or R&D programs.
• 5+ years in a dedicated technical leadership or architectural role focused on software.