In A Nutshell
Lead the end-to-end product effort, from discovery and roadmap development through pilot deployments, with an emphasis on pragmatic, interoperable workflows, clear value for field stations, and long-term sustainability.
Responsibilities
Product & Portfolio Leadership
- Own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap; balance near-term pilot milestones with long-term scalability and sustainability.
- Actively manage the day-to-day product backlog, including ongoing grooming, prioritization, and sequencing of work in collaboration with engineering and stakeholders.
- Translate discovery findings into prioritized specs and measurable outcomes; maintain a transparent backlog and release plan.
- Define lightweight success metrics (adoption, data linkage quality, admin time saved) and drive continuous improvement.
- Enforce a lean architectural approach to prevent feature bloat, ensuring the platform remains lightweight, maintainable, and functional in a resource-constrained environment.
- Coordinate with the UC3 Product Team to ensure the platform remains aligned with the broader product strategy across other areas of focus, including research data management, digital preservation, data publishing, and persistent identifiers.
- Collaborate with the UCNRS team to ensure the platform continues to meet their user needs while also facilitating adoption by stations outside of the UC system.
User & Community Engagement
- Lead user research with field-station staff, researchers, and administrators; synthesize needs into intuitive, low-overhead workflows.
- Convene the advisory group; incorporate public-interest, equity, and accessibility considerations.
- Build partnerships with open infrastructure (e.g., DataCite, Crossref, ROR, ORCID; repository and protocol services) to ensure smooth PID and metadata flows.
- Recruit and coordinate a network of users who can champion the platform to their peers in the FSML community.
Delivery & Operations
- Steward the transition from existing reservation and logistics workflows to new capabilities, ensuring continuity of service, clear communication with current users, and appropriate support models during and after pilots.
- Guide engineering/UX through iterative prototyping, usability testing, and staged pilots; de-risk integrations and change management.
- Document decision logs, product requirements, and implementation guides for pilots and future adopters.
- Coordinate reporting to funders; contribute to communications, demos, and community presentations.
Strategy & Sustainability
- Ensure the platform is designed as a public good: open-source, globally applicable, and usable by under-resourced field stations without adding administrative or financial burden.
- Contribute to articulating FAIR Station’s impact narrative for funders, institutions, and the broader research community.
- Map adoption pathways (hosted/managed service vs. self-hosted patterns), support models, and costing.
- Scan adjacent policy/standards landscapes; align with emerging best practices in research information and open science.
Skillset
- 5+ years of product management or program/project leadership delivering software-enabled services in research infrastructure, scholarly communications, open science, digital libraries, publishing, or adjacent public-interest tech.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and ship incremental value (roadmaps, prioritization, delivery).
- Strong stakeholder facilitation and community engagement skills; able to translate between technical and non-technical audiences.
- Excellent written and verbal communication; clear, concise documentation and reporting.
- Commitment to open, interoperable, and equitable infrastructure.