Senior Product Manager (CoDeveloper) at Institute of Food Technologists – Chicago, Illinois

Summary/Objective
The Senior Product Manager owns the success of CoDeveloper, the first AI-enabled software solution launched by IFT to accelerate food and beverage R&D through science. This role is responsible for translating organizational goals and user needs into a clear product roadmap, ensuring high-quality delivery, strong customer adoption, and measurable business impact. The Senior Product Manager leads day-to-day product execution, including intake, prioritization, backlog management, and release coordination, working closely with Engineering, Customer Success, and cross-functional partners to deliver valuable, user-centered solutions.

This role also plays a key part in establishing scalable product management practices as IFT grows its digital capabilities. As the organization expands its technology portfolio, the Senior Product Manager will contribute to the exploration and early definition of future digital products and platform extensions, partnering with leadership to evaluate opportunities and shape new product concepts.

Essential Responsibilities
• Own day-to-day product execution for CoDeveloper, including intake, prioritization, backlog management, and release readiness, with full accountability for delivery outcomes, prioritization decisions, and customer impact
• Manage and prioritize the product backlog in alignment with strategic themes and customer impact
• Define and maintain product roadmap aligned with company strategy
• Translate customer, business, and internal stakeholder needs into clear user stories, acceptance criteria, and product requirements
• Lead backlog refinement and sprint planning as the final decision-maker on scope, sequencing, and priority tradeoffs, in close partnership with Engineering
• Collaborate with Customer Success to collect, analyze, and synthesize customer feedback, product requests, and adoption insights
• Lead customer discovery efforts to validate needs, test concepts, and inform roadmap decisions
• Remain deeply engaged in day-to-day product decisions to ensure strategy is correctly translated into shipped features and customer value
• Support sprint reviews, product demos, and acceptance testing for new features and enhancements
• Serve as the primary decision-maker for product prioritization and scope tradeoffs, in alignment with organizational strategy
• Communicate upcoming releases and product changes to internal stakeholders through release notes and enablement materials
• Collaborate with Marketing and Sales to support product messaging, launches, and customer enablement efforts
• Help establish and maintain consistent product operating rhythms, including intake processes, prioritization frameworks, and release communication
• Monitor feature usage, adoption trends, and customer feedback to identify opportunities for continuous improvement
• Serve as primary product counterpart to outsourced engineering partners
• Partner with Engineering to clarify scope, review delivered work, and ensure solutions meet requirements and quality expectations
• Identify opportunities for product growth and differentiation
• Review monthly financial reports for all owned programs
• Stay abreast of current and future marketplace opportunities, issues, and competitive landscape
• Contribute to the discovery and early definition of new technology products and platform extensions, including opportunity assessment, user research, and initial roadmap shaping, as the organization expands its digital product portfolio
• Ensure compliance with industry and legal regulations and best practices, and adherence to company processes and procedures

Travel Required

• Occasional domestic travel is expected including the ability to attend occasional evening, weekend, and overnight meetings

Required Education and Experience
• Bachelor’s degree in business, information systems, engineering, food science, chemistry, biology, or equivalent
• 7+ years of progressive experience or demonstrated competency in product management, product ownership, business analysis, or similar roles supporting software products
• Demonstrated success owning both product strategy and day-to-day execution in a SaaS or software environment
• Experience supporting technical, scientific, or process-driven users, or demonstrated ability to quickly learn complex domain workflows
• Experience supporting technical or scientific users (food and beverage experience is a plus)
• Proven ability to translate customer needs into clear user stories, acceptance criteria, and product requirements
• Experience working cross-functionally with engineering, project management, and customer-facing teams
• Experience collaborating with external or distributed engineering teams
• Familiarity with agile or iterative delivery environments

Preferred Experience
• Experience supporting software products used by scientists, researchers, engineers, or other technical users
• Experience launching 0 to 1 or early-stage products
• Experience collaborating with UX designers or conducting user research to inform product requirements and improve usability
• Experience supporting post-launch product improvement, including usability enhancements, adoption initiatives, and incremental feature delivery
• Experience in a nonprofit or mission-driven environment

Other Duties
This position, and all others at IFT, may be modified at any time. To ensure operational efficiency and meet the changing needs of our customers and our Business, other duties may be assigned as needed.

Physical Requirements
While performing the essential duties of this job, the employee is required to sit and stand for sustained periods of time, frequently talk, hear, use hands and fingers to feel, handle, and operate objects or controls, and occasionally stand, bend, stretch, stoop, kneel and crouch. The employee is required to have close visual acuity to perform an activity such as preparing and analyzing data and figures, transcribing, and viewing a computer terminal.

Compensation & Benefits
Salary Range: $130,000 to 135,000 Per Year (commensurate with experience and qualifications)

Benefits: IFT offers a comprehensive benefits package designed to reward and energize our employees, so they can live a balanced life and maintain their well-being. We offer medical, dental, and vision plans at affordable rates. Life and Long Term Disability insurance is completely free to all employees. Most benefits begin the first of the month following employee’s start date. To learn more about IFT and our excellent benefits, please visit our careers page here: https://www.ift.org/about-ift/work-at-ift