Principal Product Manager

Be Essential At Cars Commerce

At Cars Commerce, we're fanatical about simplifying everything about car buying and selling. We do right by our customers and consumers to better connect the industry with simplified and tierless technology to enhance, measure and drive local automotive retail. Whether through our No.1 most recognized marketplace, Cars.com, our industry-leading digital experience, Dealer Inspire, our trade and appraisal technology, AccuTrade, our reputation-based digital wholesale auction marketplace, Dealerclub, or our new Cars Commerce Media Network, Cars Commerce is essential for success in the automotive industry.

No one ever travels alone here : at its core, Cars Commerce is collaboration. In fact, it's built into the very fabric of our shared values. We like to say we Rise Together putting people at the center of what we do, from consumer to customer to community. Life at Cars Commerce makes it easy when we share the ethos to be Open to All, encouraging open-minded communication because we know diverse thinking yields better outcomes. But critical to our success is Caring to Challenge and Taking Ownership, fueling a competitive spirit in a respectful environment where we think about tomorrow but act today. At our foundation, we have integrity, Doing the Right Thing, even when it's hard. It's our shared commitment to these values that makes Cars Commerce a place where growth becomes not only possible, but downright unavoidable.

But don't take our word for it. As a U.S. News & World Report Best Company to Work For in 2024, we're obsessive about the employee experience. We are among the top 20% being declared "Best" of our industry based on six critical factors that are important to employee wellbeing, like quality of pay, benefits, work life balance and more.

(This is a remote role that may require onsite interviews)

About The Role

Cars Commerce builds solutions for automotive dealerships, manufacturers, and consumers. Our driving force is to deliver one platform to simplify everything about buying and selling cars. The Platform organization creates the foundational capabilities used across our product portfolio, enabling speed, consistency, and innovation.

Join us in shaping a future of Automotive Commerce. Our Platform team is embarking on a transformation journey, building innovative services and redefining how we deliver value to our customers.

Our modern data driven products are at the core of the Cars Commerce Platform and critical to our success. We enable customers, consumers, and internal stakeholders to use data to fulfill their goals. From car shoppers finding the right car and seller, to partners garnering insights into their inventory and selling patterns to improve profits, our data is key. We acquire, transform, store, analyze, and produce the data that enable our products and business owners to turn information into insights and outcomes.

Our Principal Product Manager role is an Independent Contributor Leadership role. This is an exceptional opportunity to influence the future of our Data Platform and drive meaningful change at scale to make an impact within the automotive industry.

About You

The Principal Product Manager, Data Platform at Cars Commerce is responsible for leading the strategic direction of data initiatives across the organization. This role defines and delivers a cohesive and inspiring roadmap for a comprehensive data platform that supports business insights, product analytics, reporting, and a wide range of data-driven applications.

Success in this position requires building strategic partnerships with business leaders and collaborating closely with data architecture, data engineering, data science, and business intelligence teams. The role involves producing detailed functional requirements and establishing as well as monitoring key performance indicators to measure the impact and effectiveness of the data platform.

The Principal Product Manager is a creative problem solver, role model, coach, and thought leader for other product managers, with a strong focus on execution and driving positive outcomes for users. This individual demonstrates deep trust in and commitment to the organization's vision, mission, and values.

A successful candidate will possess strong customer empathy and make product decisions grounded in both qualitative and quantitative insights from customer behavior and business data. Decisions are made with a focus on optimizing ROI and enhancing both top-line and bottom-line performance.

This role requires a passion for solving complex problems, developing forward-looking strategies and roadmaps, and executing plans that deliver measurable value to users and the business. The ideal candidate is a natural collaborator and communicator, with a proven ability to build strong relationships across a diverse, cross-functional organization.

Additionally, this individual must be capable of establishing, articulating, and gaining alignment on a compelling product vision that spans the company's entire ecosystem of offerings.

Why You'll Be Excited About This Role :

Define and prioritize a data platform roadmap that aligns with customer needs, organization key results, product vision, and strategy.

Inform and help build data strategy by collecting feedback from internal and external customers, performing market and competitive analysis, and balancing stakeholder requests with long-term strategic direction.

Partner with other Product Managers, Customers, Stakeholders, Enterprise Data and Data Engineering teams to define functional and nonfunctional requirements for the data platform.

Maintain close partnership with the enterprise data, data engineering, data science, and business intelligence teams.

Consistently deliver high value and impactful work, on schedule.

Drive real customer and business value that shows up internally and externally, regularly, and predictably.

Collaborate with cross-functional teammates to improve our processes and ensure team alignment towards goals.

Refine and contribute to team level goals (KPIs / OKRs), through the delivery of world class products. Measure and communicate successes and opportunities at all organizational levels.

Establish effective, trusting relationships with key internal and external partners, including senior leadership.

Establish yourself as an expert and thought leader across the full Cars Commerce product space.

Communicate roadmaps, updates and key accomplishments effectively and broadly throughout the organization, including to senior leadership.

Work across other internal teams to establish clear interconnected roadmaps to align on intersection points.

We're Excited About You Because

Bachelor's degree in business, computer science, or economics, or related field, or equivalent work experience.

At least 10 years of experience as a product manager in a SaaS environment, with an extensive track record of product managing data products and platforms.

Understanding of data management principles and methodologies. Hands on experience with data governance, analytics and machine learning product development.

Technical skills in SQL, ETL processes, Tableau, and / or other relational databases or data visualization tools.

Experience working with senior product leaders to contribute to and execute high level product strategy.

Strong analytical skills and a commitment to data driven decision making.

Experience working across the entire product process (strategy through to delivery) and an exceptional grasp of the fundamental principles of product management, lean product development and agile practices.

Experience defining KPIs and product metrics and using them to drive decisions, and pairing that with a sense for how and when to balance data with intuition.

Nice to Have Qualifications :

MBA or other advanced degree.

Salary Range $175,800.00-219,750.00

Our Comprehensive Benefits Package includes : Medical, Dental & Vision Healthcare Plans, New Hire Stipend for Home Office Set-Up, Generous PTO, Refuel - a service based recognition program where employees receive additional paid time away to learn grow and reset, Paid Holidays, Floating Holiday, Volunteer Day, Recharge Day