Sr. Product Operations Manager

Axon Axon · Enterprise · AZ · 2022 New Ventures

This role manages the full product lifecycle of Axon's drone and Sky-Hero product portfolio, focusing on quality, cost, strategic planning, and customer escalations. It involves cross-functional collaboration with engineering, operations, finance, and customer success to identify risks, lead root cause analysis, manage sustaining engineering, and drive cost reduction initiatives. The role also includes setting product and lifecycle strategy, pricing, and commercial readiness for new launches, with some customer-facing travel for de-escalation.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own product quality and field performance across our product portfolio, including quality metrics, field benchmarks, RMA thresholds, defect tolerances, escalation paths, and corrective action playbooks
  2. Analyze first-pass yield, outgoing quality, RMA, field performance, and customer escalation data to identify product risk, prioritize critical issues, and guide stop-ship, containment, and allowable defect decisions
  3. Lead root cause analysis and corrective action efforts for complex product issues, partnering with Engineering, Product Management, Operations, Finance, and Customer Success to resolve high-impact issues with clear customer and business value
  4. Manage sustaining engineering and post-launch optimization efforts that improve product reliability, reduce customer pain points, and strengthen field performance over time
  5. Set product and lifecycle strategy in partnership with the Product Management lead, including SKU architecture, product specifications, end-of-life planning, and portfolio decisions across current and future product lines

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor's degree in a technical field or business, or equivalent work experience
  • 5+ years of relevant Product Operations Management experience ideally working with technology in an operational environment
  • Proactive and self-propelled working style, comfortable working through ambiguity and seeking out new directions to solve the higher-level mission and goals
  • Background spanning operations, project management, and engineering — experience in roles such as production planner, process/manufacturing engineer, quality engineer, or production supervisor strongly preferred
  • Experience solving hard user interaction problems with creative solutions that deliver easy/simple customer experiences
  • Experience working with engineers to balance scope, time to market, and functionality, making tough trade-offs using qualitative, quantitative, and many times incomplete data
  • Excellent problem solving skills, well-structured written and verbal communication
  • Flexibility to travel domestically and internationally when necessary (5-10%)

Nice to have

  • Technical expertise in design, operation, or back-end support of robots
  • Experience working directly with governmental agencies (Local, State or Federal)
  • Degree in a STEM Field

What the JD emphasized

  • full lifecycle
  • cross-functional
  • critical decisions
  • ambiguous environment
  • ultimate ownership
  • high-impact issues
  • complex product issues
  • customer and business value
  • product reliability
  • customer pain points
  • field performance
  • product and lifecycle strategy
  • portfolio decisions
  • product economics
  • financial impact
  • long-term profitability
  • commercial and sales operations readiness
  • new product launches
  • new markets
  • system readiness
  • post-launch performance
  • emerging quality issues
  • operational gaps
  • rapid iteration
  • corrective action
  • customer locations
  • critical situations
  • technical and business resource
  • technical field
  • operational environment
  • Proactive and self-propelled working style
  • working through ambiguity
  • seeking out new directions
  • higher-level mission and goals
  • production planner
  • process/manufacturing engineer
  • quality engineer
  • production supervisor
  • hard user interaction problems
  • creative solutions
  • easy/simple customer experiences
  • balance scope
  • time to market
  • functionality
  • tough trade-offs
  • qualitative, quantitative, and many times incomplete data
  • Excellent problem solving skills
  • well-structured written and verbal communication
  • Flexibility to travel