Job Requisition ID #
26WD97833
About Forma
Forma is Autodesk's industry cloud for AEC — an end-to-end platform spanning the project lifecycle from planning through design, construction, and operations. It is where the industry's data, workflows, and applications come together across that lifecycle, supported by a shared data foundation called Scenarios.
The Design Apps area you would lead is the design-phase slice of Forma: cloud-native applications for architects, urban planners, and civil engineers that run in the browser and connect to the rest of the platform through Scenarios. Forma is Autodesk's bet that the future of AEC is a connected industry cloud, and the Design Apps are where many of those workflow originate and where significant strategic leverage lives.
About the role The Director of Product for Design Apps leads product strategy and execution across the design-phase applications within Forma. Today the portfolio includes Site Design, Building Design, Street Design, and Land Development, with Design Automations on the horizon.
This is a portfolio role rather than a single-product role. The applications sit at very different stages of maturity — from a scaling product with established revenue to a pre-launch initiative — and share a common data foundation that is itself still evolving. The Director is responsible for making the portfolio greater than the sum of its parts: deciding where to invest, where to hold, and how the applications reinforce one another through the underlying platform.
Responsibilities
- Lead the Design Apps portfolio. Set strategy across Site Design, Building Design, Street Design, Land Development, and Design Automations as it matures. Make and defend the tradeoffs between them.
- **Lead a team of 4–5 Product Managers and the cross-functional triads they run. **Each PM leads a squad of product, design, and engineering. The Director is accountable for the performance and development of both the PMs and the broader triads they lead. Coaching cross-functional teams is a core part of the role, not an adjacency.
- Shape team design. Squad boundaries, ownership, and goals fall within the Director's remit. Getting the structure right is one of the highest-leverage areas of the first year.
- Drive cross-organization alignment. Partner closely with peers in Engineering, Design Tool,, Growth, Strategy & Operations, and Analytics (Simen) within Forma Design, and align on strategy and dependencies with Revit, Civil 3D, and the wider Autodesk AEC organization.
- **Deliver the outcomes that matter. **Monthly active users, retention (with particular attention to US new-user retention rate), revenue, and platform adoption — anchored in a defensible portfolio strategy.
What makes this role distinctive
- A cloud-native product within a desktop-native company. The architecture, release cadence, and operating expectations differ from much of Autodesk. The role offers the speed of a focused, modern product organization, while creating good interfaces to ensure that users benefit from the joint strength of the new design apps and the existing desktop portfolio.
- A portfolio, not a product. Four applications on a shared platform mean that every decision creates tradeoffs across surfaces. Leaders who think in single-product terms tend to struggle in this role.
- Domain expansion in motion. The portfolio is simultaneously deepening within architecture (Building Design) and expanding into engineering (Land Development, Street Design). Both are active strategic bets.
- Analysis as a moat; creation maturing. The Design Apps hold a real advantage in design-phase analysis — the kind that informs decisions before they are committed to later phases. The window to pair that with strong creation capabilities is roughly 18–24 months before competitors converge on the same loop.
- A persistent platform–application tension. Scenarios, the shared data foundation, requires application adoption to compound; the applications themselves require feature investment to grow. Sequencing this tension well is central to the role.
- Single-application depth versus multi-application workflows. Every feature investment trades off between deepening one application for its primary user and strengthening cross-application workflows (for example, Site Design → Land Development → Building Design). Both matter; neither wins by default.
- Short-term outcomes versus long-term bets. Quarterly MAU and revenue targets are real, as is the work that compounds only over years — platform adoption, US market fit, and domain credibility in engineering. The Director must be deliberate about which horizon they are optimizing for in any given decision, and why.
- Technical direction as product direction. Choices about CAD paradigms (parametric, solid modeling, hybrid), AI approach (generative, analytical, rules-based, or combinations), and data model design shape what the products can become. The Director is expected to engage substantively with these decisions and co-own them with engineering leadership, rather than treating them as engineering-only territory.
Candidate profile
- **Product leadership at scale, including coaching cross-functional teams. **Experience managing PMs, not only products, and coaching full product–design–engineering triads as a unit. A clear sense of when to set direction and when to step in directly.
- A perspective on team design. Demonstrated experience shaping squad boundaries, ownership, and goals — and the judgment to distinguish a structural issue from a people issue.
- AEC or built-environment depth, or a credible adjacent background. Adjacent disciplines such as GIS, infrastructure, simulation, civil or structural software, and urban analytics are relevant. Direct AEC experience is not required, but genuine engagement with the domain is.
- Platform and multi-application thinking. A strong understanding of how shared data foundations compound value across applications, and a clear approach to designing for workflows that cross applications rather than only features within one.
- Comfort with ambiguity across maturity stages. The ability to operate effectively across products at different stages — from pre-product–market fit to scaling — without applying a uniform playbook.
- Cross-organization partnership as a default mode of working. Demonstrated ability to align strategies with peer organizations whose incentives may not fully match your own, and to treat dependency management as a working discipline rather than an escalation path.
- AI-informed product sense. A clear point of view on how generative and analytical AI are reshaping design tools, and where the meaningful product leverage lies. Deep AI expertise is not required.
- Substantive engagement with technical direction. Choices around CAD paradigms, AI approach, data model design, and interoperability are inseparable from product direction in this domain. Candidates are expected to form views and co-own these decisions with engineering, rather than defer them.
Learn More
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