The Senior Product Manager – Warehouse Execution Systems (WES) is responsible for defining, evolving, and delivering software capabilities that orchestrate work across complex automated distribution centers.

This role requires strong domain knowledge of warehouse execution, inventory management, order and task orchestration, and warehouse automation. The Senior Product Manager must understand how orders, inventory, people, and automation interact across a distribution center and translate operational challenges into scalable product capabilities.

This is a hands-on product role. The ideal candidate will work directly with customers, warehouse operations, Solution Design, Software Solution Architects, Engineering, Data Science, UX, QA, and Sales. They should be comfortable moving between customer conversations, warehouse-floor workflows, product strategy, detailed requirements, and development discussions.

The Senior Product Manager is also expected to be an AI-enabled product leader, using modern AI tools to improve requirements quality, identify edge cases, reduce refinement cycles, and develop repeatable workflows or agents that improve Product team efficiency.

Role and Responsibilities

• Product Strategy, Roadmap & Customer Engagement

• Own and contribute to the WES product roadmap, balancing strategic investments, customer requirements, technical improvements, and market opportunities.
• Engage directly with customers and warehouse operations teams to gather Voice of Customer, understand operational challenges, validate concepts, and demonstrate product capabilities.
• Participate in pre-sales, Solution Design, customer workshops, testing, and warehouse visits.
• Evaluate requirements based on customer value, operational impact, technical feasibility, development effort, and applicability across customers.
• Identify opportunities to convert customer-specific requirements into configurable and reusable product capabilities.
• Maintain a clear distinction between base product functionality and customer-specific customization.
• Communicate WES capabilities and product direction effectively to technical, operational, commercial, and executive stakeholders.

• WES Product Definition & Execution

• Define capabilities across receiving, decant, inventory, storage, replenishment, allocation, picking, consolidation, packing, shipping, and exception management.
• Understand and define how WES should prioritize, release, route, sequence, and balance work across automated and manual areas of a distribution center.
• Maintain strong knowledge of inventory concepts including handling units, locations, inventory states, reservations, allocation, replenishment, cycle counting, and inventory movements.
• Understand how WES interacts with WMS, WCS, PLC/Controls, ASRS, AutoStore, AMRs/AGVs, robotics, conveyors, sortation, GTP, and packing systems.
• Translate operational requirements into clear features, epics, workflows, and implementation-ready user stories.
• Ensure requirements include appropriate business rules, acceptance criteria, configurations, UI behavior, integrations, payloads, exception handling, and expected system behavior.
• Work closely with Engineering and Architecture to understand technical implications, integration dependencies, and design trade-offs.
• Partner with Data Science where algorithms or optimization are used for allocation, replenishment, work release, routing, prioritization, or resource balancing.
• Maintain a well-refined backlog and actively participate in refinement, sprint reviews, PI/release planning, and other Agile ceremonies.

• Quality, Validation & AI-Enabled Product Management

• Own product quality throughout the development lifecycle and validate delivered functionality against the intended operational outcome.
• Ensure requirements and test scenarios consider positive, negative, edge, exception, concurrency, integration failure, and recovery conditions where applicable.
• Use AI tools to challenge requirements and identify missing scenarios, ambiguous requirements, dependencies, downstream impacts, and potential implementation gaps before stories reach Development.
• Use AI-assisted quality checks to ensure stories contain enough functional and technical context to minimize repeated clarification between Product/BA and Development.
• Develop reusable AI prompts, workflows, or agents for requirements analysis, story quality, documentation, test scenario generation, impact analysis, and product knowledge retrieval.
• Explore integration of AI with Jira, Confluence, product documentation, SRS documents, test cases, and other knowledge sources.
• Ensure AI-generated output is reviewed and validated by accountable Product team members; AI should improve product judgment, not replace it.
• Use learnings from defects and customer testing to continuously improve requirements and prevent similar issues upstream.

• Leadership & Cross-Functional Influence

• Provide product leadership across Product Owners, BAs, UX, Engineering, QA, SSA, Data Science, Sales, and Solutions Design.
• Mentor Product Managers, Product Owners, and BAs in warehouse domain knowledge, requirements quality, product thinking, and customer engagement.
• Drive alignment when customer requirements, product strategy, technical constraints, and project timelines compete.
• Promote consistent standards, templates, documentation, and product development practices.
• Serve as a WES product SME who can independently represent the product with customers and internal stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Computer Science, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain, Engineering, or related field.
• 7+ years of relevant experience in Product Management, Product Ownership, Solution Architecture, Business/System Analysis, or software solution delivery.
• 5+ years of experience in warehouse execution, warehouse automation, material handling, or related supply chain software.
• Experience with WES, WCS, WMS, or comparable warehouse execution platforms.
• Strong understanding of warehouse operations, inventory management, fulfillment, and work orchestration.
• Experience with automation technologies such as ASRS, AutoStore, GTP, AMRs/AGVs, robotics, conveyors, or sortation systems.
• Experience translating complex warehouse operations into scalable software requirements.
• Strong understanding of Agile software development, Jira, product roadmaps, epics, stories, and backlog management.
• Working knowledge of APIs, payloads, system integrations, and event/message-driven architectures.
• Strong customer-facing communication and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to use generative AI tools in product management or software delivery workflows, beyond basic content generation.
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally to customer sites as required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct Product Management experience with a commercial WES/WCS product.
• Experience with work orchestration, allocation, replenishment, routing, task management, inventory optimization, or resource balancing.
• Experience delivering software for large-scale automated distribution centers.
• Experience with optimization algorithms, simulation, analytics, AI, or machine learning in warehouse operations.
• Experience creating AI agents, automated quality-review workflows, or AI-assisted Product/BA processes.
• Experience connecting AI with enterprise knowledge sources such as Jira, Confluence, requirements, and test cases.
• Experience with business cases, commercialization, roadmap prioritization, and product lifecycle management.
• SAFe, CSPO, Pragmatic Product Management, or equivalent certification.

The base salary range for this role is $115,900 to $173,800.  This base salary range represents the low and high end of the base salary range for this position. Actual base salary offered will vary based on various factors including but not limited to location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and performance.

What Success Looks Like

A successful Senior Product Manager should be able to walk into a distribution center, understand how orders, inventory, people, software, and automation interact, identify the operational problem, and explain how WES should solve it.

They should be comfortable discussing an operational workflow with a customer, defining a product capability, reviewing an integration with an architect, refining requirements with Development, and validating the finished functionality on the warehouse floor.

They should also use AI as a force multiplier, challenging requirements for missing scenarios, improving story completeness, reducing development clarification cycles, and ultimately creating repeatable AI-enabled processes that improve the productivity and quality of the broader Product team.

The goal is to build someone who doesn't simply manage a backlog, but owns the WES product from customer problem through scalable product solution and successful execution.

This job description describes the general nature and level of work expected of a person assigned to this position. All job requirements listed indicate the minimum level of knowledge, skills and/or ability deemed necessary to perform the job proficiently. Employees may be required to perform any other job-related duties as requested by their supervisor.

It is the policy of FORTNA and its affiliated companies to provide equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, citizenship status (if authorized to work in the U.S.), or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, FORTNA will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.