Research & Discovery
Product Manager
Rosemead, CA
Duration:
1 year contract
Pay:$57-62/hr
The Product Manager for Research & Discovery translates ambiguous business challenges into clear, validated, and estimate-ready problem definitions. This role leads early-stage discovery efforts, maps cross-channel customer journeys, identifies constraints, and produces comprehensive discovery artifacts that enable accurate IT estimation and informed investment decisions by leadership.
This is a hands-on research and discovery role focused on problem definition and validation. It does not include delivery ownership or people management responsibilities.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Discovery & Problem Framing
- Transform loosely defined business needs into well-framed opportunities grounded in customer, business, and regulatory insights.
- Produce complete, estimate-ready discovery packets to support IT estimation, capital planning, and strategic prioritization.
- Partner with senior product leadership to develop ROI models when required.
- Synthesize fragmented backlog items into coherent strategic themes.
Research & Validation Leadership
- Lead customer research activities including interviews, usability testing, concept validation, and rapid prototyping with feedback loops.
- Leverage call center data, quality monitoring analytics, and operational insights to validate root causes and opportunity areas.
- Collaborate with senior product leadership to identify and account for regulatory constraints impacting solution design.
- Create service blueprints, journey maps, business rules, and low-fidelity prototypes to support decision-making.
Stakeholder Alignment & Scope Management
- Partner with domain product managers to understand end-to-end journey impacts and constraints early in discovery.
- Collaborate with domain product managers to define MVP scope and ensure IT estimates reflect validated, realistic boundaries.
- Ensure all discovery artifacts are aligned, complete, and ready before transitioning work to estimation or execution.
Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in product discovery, UX research, product strategy, or service design.
- Strong expertise in journey mapping, service blueprinting, and early-stage prototyping.
- Proven ability to translate user needs and operational insights into clear business value.
- Excellent synthesis, facilitation, and problem-framing skills.
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