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Product Line Director
Akamai
Cambridge, MA, United States
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Product Line Director - Web Application Security
Overview
About the Job
Akamai is looking for an experienced Product leader with the creativity, vision, and experience to drive development of our industry leading cloud security solutions, such as Kona Site Defender, Web Application Protector, and Kona DDoS Defender.
About the Team & Products
Our products and services are used by the world's top e-commerce, travel, media and entertainment, financial services, and government web-sites to consistently provide high-quality web experiences that increase the overall effectiveness of our customer’s web presence.
The team behind these products is a group of industry leading product and engineering professionals dedicated to technology innovation that improves the performance of our customers web sites, web businesses, and web experiences.
Responsibilities
The Director will lead the identification and execution of key product initiatives that will grow Akamai’s Cloud Security business. This position will own the success of products globally, working closely with the sales teams, the Product Marketing, and the rest of the Products and Development Group (PDG) driving product enhancements and market requirements. This will require utilizing customer feedback, market data (competitive research and analysis), and industry trends to anticipate market, business and technology changes, and drive decisions on how to leverage these changes. The Director of Product Management will develop product strategies and work with counterparts in other regions as they determine local market product and packaging requirements.
As a Director of Product Line you will be responsible for:
• Provide product vision and leadership for a subset of the Cloud Security product line.
• Own the packaging, pricing, positioning, and work closely with the Product Marketing organization on the go-to-market plan.
• Anticipate and react to major technology, business model, and market changes in order to define market strategy in a new competitive landscape.
• Maintain company leadership in the global competitive landscape within the industries relevant to Akamai.
• Identify market opportunities that leverage Akamai’s existing competitive advantage, assets and relationships as well as capitalize on emerging industry trends.
• Actively develop relationships with customers and partners at the executive level, working with the Offerings and Field Enablement team and/or Product Marketing.
• Be the voice of the customer inside Akamai – understand business goals and pain points and create open lines of communication to and from the market.
• Actively articulate the Business Unit and products’ vision and roadmaps to prospects, customers, and industry leaders, in partnership with the Product Marketing team.
• Effective peer leadership across various groups throughout the company – sales, account management, engineering, channels and field enablement.
• Extensive travel in North America and abroad is required.
• Strong reputation as a thought leader, awareness of technology trends and external influencers.
• High degree of technical expertise and business acumen, previous general management experience preferred.
• Experience leading a product that was a new entrant to a successful result in service providers.
• Ability to set clear and deliverable goals. Demonstrates tenacity, commitment to deliver and be accountable for results.
• A motivating executive capable of instilling excitement and inspiring others.
• Strong ability to influence and work collaboratively with people at all levels and within various functions of organizations.
• Experience attracting, hiring, retaining, and mentoring high-performing teams and individuals. Track record of effectively managing employee performance through measurable objectives.
• Highly effective communicator, ability to convey product vision and complex concepts.
• An analytical approach to product management – the ability to back up product features / strategy and pricing with empirical data.
• Lead Product Definition, Development and Rollout Process.
• Lead interactions with other Akamai divisions and senior executives.
• Define and implement a product roadmap
• Lead early stage customer interactions working with BD and Sales teams
• Be the voice of the consumer within the Business Unit, especially around user experience, product appeal, content related topics
• Manage product through initial launch and follow-up on releases
• Provide actionable guidance to engineering with clear prioritization of development efforts
• Develop product collateral such as technical white papers, presentations, sales tools, and competitive analysis
• Create and deliver sales training for the direct sales force and the technical services and support teams
• Establish key market adoption milestones and manage team to accomplish those milestones
• Represent Akamai at conferences and other events
Qualifications
Required Education and Experience
Applicants must meet one of the following education and experience requirements:
• 15 years of relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree or
• 12 years of relevant experience and a Master’s degree or
• 10 years of relevant experience and a PhD or
• Equivalent professional experience
Required Skills
• 12+ years of professional experience in the technology industry..
• 8+ years of experience managing teams.
• 8+ years of experience implementing and executing product strategies globally.
• 5+ years of HTTP/Web experience
• 5+ years of experience working directly with customers
• 5+ years of experience in web application security or equivalent experience
• 3+ years experience developing, launching and managing products
Desired Skills
• Experience in a similar role for a global technology company.
• Domain expertise with the following:
-Information Security - especially Application Security
-Internet technology – TCP/IP and HTTP based knowledge.
-Application development tools and techniques.
-Cloud computing application development trends and market landscape.
• Indirect product sales models.
• High degree of technical expertise and business acumen
• Highly motivated, proactive and self-sufficient with the ability to motivate and drive a team of intelligent, creative and opinionated colleagues
• Ability to gather data from the market and customers to analytically determine business priorities
• Proven ability to inspire action from other product, engineering, and sales leaders
• Strong desire for ongoing challenges and interest in continuously learning about new Internet technologies
• Exceptionally strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to a broad range of technical and business audiences
• Situational fluency, ability to influence and motivate others, and perseverance to handle challenging business situations