Advertising director job description

In the role as Director, Product, Advertising you will drive the construction and execution of the strategic product roadmap for Piano’s advertising offering, enabling Publishers to propel their advertising sales and drive ad revenue from their data inventory. Today, Piano empowers clients to collect real-time online user behavior, content consumption and event data that can be combined into advanced audience segments and activated via a broad set of 3rd party Ad connectors. Piano’s ability to drive user action, collect and act on 1st party data gives our clients the capability to succeed even as the ad ecosystem is reshaped by the end of 3rd party cookies. In the role as Director, Product, Advertising you will play a central role in evolving our advertising offering, identifying innovative solutions to product and market challenges by utilizing your solid understanding of the advertising ecosystem, key industry trends, and product management experience. You will be responsible for ensuring the successful launch of new advertising functionality and Ad integration capabilities in alignment with company strategic goals - and an advocate for high quality user experiences fulfilling client satisfaction and retention. As our company evolves and expands into new verticals, the Director, Product, Advertising will identify critical advertising capabilities required for expansion based on input from our executive team, growth team, strategic services, clients, and market research. In the role you will report to VP, Product, and Product, Development, Growth and Strategic Services are key functions you will collaborate with.

Primary Responsibilities:

Strategy and roadmap - Own roadmap for Advertising domain

• Own the product roadmap for our Advertising domain including our DMP application
• Identify and prioritize roadmap initiatives based on Piano vision and strategy, client needs, and market trends - in close collaboration with our Growth team. Distill identified needs into suggested roadmap initiatives.
• Involve senior leadership and other key stakeholders in roadmap planning. Align on initiative success criteria (OKRs), manage tradeoffs between competing priorities and available resourcing, and clearly articulate reasoning behind prioritization decisions.
• Present roadmaps to internal and external stakeholders. Generate interest, build understanding, and foster alignment around a common vision for our products.
• Guide team members to ensure feature prioritization takes place with thorough consideration, serving as the voice of senior leadership.
• Contribute to Piano’s vision and strategy at the senior level.

Feature definition - Own feature specification and planning

• Lead definition of scope and approach for prioritized projects
• Coordinate the efforts of team members in solutioning, research and document the planned approach for development. Guide team members to ensure features are defined thoughtfully, thoroughly, and in consideration of the overall Piano platform.
• Produce comprehensive feature specifications including problem to solve, success criteria (OKRs), use cases, UX flows, design and development requirements - present to stakeholders incorporating feedback and constructive criticism along the way.
• Demonstrate a strong technical understanding of our platform’s existing capabilities - determine how new features should leverage and/or replace existing functionality to best meet business needs.
• Ensure collaboration and alignment when a development project has dependencies, resolving any potential challenges with conflicting priorities.
• Continuously work cross-functionally to align on how new features should be integrated within current products and the Piano platform.

Delivery - Own realization of feature projects

• Own the delivery and launch of new features, multi-feature initiatives, and products.
• Serve as the voice of the customer and functional authority. Ensure that requirements are well understood by all team members and that features emerge from build while remaining aligned with business goals.
• Define launch requirements in partnership with product marketing, program management, and other relevant stakeholders. Represent the product team in launch activities and evangelize new product capabilities internally and with clients.
• Define and measure success criteria for items being developed and released.
• Work with program managers to provide transparency and reporting on timelines to project stakeholders including senior leadership.
• Deliver feature projects in a way that enables Piano clients to best meet business needs in a frictionless and delightful manner with a product with exceptional product design - we strive to be the best at what we do, this area is no exception!

Leadership and collaboration - Product team and stakeholder partnership

• Influence and inspire team members, even when no organizational authority is held over these team members.
• Build mutually informative relationships with key internal and client stakeholders - be acknowledged as a key partner contributing to business success.
• Communicate and collaborate effectively with team members around the world. Piano is a global company, made up of team members from many countries and time zones!
• Respond to priorities and needs among stakeholders, even when these are not able to be delivered as requested, in a transparent, respectful, and genuine manner which establishes mutual trust.
• Facilitate product team members’ growth to become the go-to-experts on the products and domains under their responsibility.

We are looking for candidates with the following qualifications:

• 8+ years experience as a SaaS product management
  • Experience managing products in media, advertising (buy-side and/or sell-side), or programmatic ad tech is a requirement
  • Experience directly managing or mentoring product team members is a plus
• Passionate about the advertising ecosystem and grounded in the digital ecosystem
• Experience working directly with a wide variety of stakeholders from senior leadership to clients, as well as with designers and software developers
• Demonstrated ability to achieve strategic goals in an innovative and fast-paced environment informed by experience, research, data, and industry trends
• Ability to view the “big picture” of challenges and opportunities related to client needs, including the technical, functional, process, and policy considerations, and to creatively define solutions to those challenges
• Ability to adopt the client’s perspective when defining new initiatives and features
• Experience creating product specifications and managing prioritization, software development resource allocation, project scope, and product delivery and launch
• Excellent communication, problem-solving, organizational and analytical skills. Rigorous, structured, organized, and able to influence others
• Like to plan, lead by example and work with an attitude of ‘it’s up to me to make change happen’
• Are able to coordinate across different teams and people in different time zones and cultural backgrounds

Perks at Piano

• Unlimited PTO
• 95% healthcare coverage
• Stock options
• Free daily catered lunches in the office
• Free gym in the office
• Annual continued education reimbursement
• Commuter benefits
• Unlimited healthy snacks, coffee, espresso, and soft drinks in the office
• Team events and happy hours

Applicants for this position should have authorization to work in this jurisdiction without sponsorship from the Company.