Senior Product Manager - Contractor

Location:  Durham, NC or New York, NY Purpose The Senior Product Manager at McKinney supports the strategic vision, development, delivery, and optimization of digital products and experiences—from concept to launch and beyond. This role bridges product strategy, user experience, design, technology, and business goals to ensure products deliver meaningful value for both users and clients. Comfortable in a fast-moving agency setting, you work seamlessly across disciplines to turn ideas into shipped experiences. You pair strong product judgment with structured execution, driving alignment from discovery through delivery while managing scope, budget, timelines, and outcomes. You are deeply customer-centric, grounded in design-thinking principles, and fluent in translating business ambition into product strategy and experience requirements. You bring a passion for emerging technologies, particularly AI, and actively stay current with cutting-edge tools, methods, and modern product practices. You are energized by innovation and understand how to responsibly harness AI-powered systems to create differentiated, future-forward experiences. Key Responsibilities

1. Product Strategy & Vision Define product vision, strategy, and measurable outcomes aligned to business goals. Translate business requirements into clear product strategies and actionable experience frameworks. Convert insights, research, and creative direction into structured product roadmaps and prioritized backlogs. Identify opportunities to innovate across platforms, AI-enabled systems, and connected customer journeys. Champion a customer-first mindset, ensuring user needs meaningfully inform strategic decisions. 2.  Product Development & Execution Lead the end-to-end lifecycle: discovery, definition, prototyping, build, launch, and iteration. Apply design-thinking methodologies and rapid application development principles to accelerate learning and reduce risk. Partner with product stakeholders to shape product briefs, synthesizing research, customer insights, and business goals into actionable requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria. Collaborate with design and engineering to prioritize features, manage backlogs, and ensure technical feasibility.
2. Planning & Scope Management Define scope, milestones, timelines, and resource needs in partnership with resourcing and discipline leads. Ensure requirements are clear, documented, and aligned before development begins. Identify dependencies, constraints, and risks early, proactively mitigating issues before they impact delivery. Maintain roadmap and backlog alignment as priorities evolve, incorporating stakeholder feedback without derailing delivery. Monitor burn, forecast needs, and ensure work remains within agreed parameters. Lead change management processes, documenting and communicating scope adjustments clearly across teams and clients.
3. Cross-Functional Coordination Facilitate sprint planning, standups, reviews, and retrospectives. Serve as a connective layer between business strategy, product intent, and technical implementation and ensure alignment across product lifecycle.  Anticipate and mitigate risks before they impact delivery. Ensure executive updates are delivered weekly and clearly. 
4. Measurement & Accountability Define KPIs and success metrics at the outset of projects. Track performance against goals and recommend data-informed optimizations. Conduct post-launch evaluations to inform future work. What Success Looks Like  30 days: Orient & Understand You've built a clear picture of McKinney's active products, roadmaps, and the teams behind them. You know who the key stakeholders are, how decisions get made, and where the gaps are. You've immersed yourself in the work - asking questions, absorbing context, and beginning to identify areas for optimization. 60 days: Contribute & Clarify You're running your own workstreams with minimal hand-holding. Backlogs are cleaner, requirements are tighter, and the people around you feel more aligned and focused. You've introduced at least one process or tool improvement that's already making the team faster. You've built real relationships with key stakeholders and are connecting the dots on how these products will create value for them and their clients. 90 days: Drive & Deliver You own your products end-to-end. You have a clear, confident path to shipping and, depending on where the roadmap lands, you may have already crossed that line. You're making prioritization calls, flagging risks before they land, and connecting product decisions back to business outcomes. The team sees you as the connective tissue between strategy and execution. Competencies  Demonstrated experience working on or leading modern AI-powered products and intelligent systems. Strong ability to translate business requirements into product strategy and structured experience definitions. Deeply customer- and user-centric mindset, with fluency in design-thinking methodologies. Experience engaging meaningfully with engineering teams on platform capabilities, integrations, and architectural considerations across cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Snowflake, auth0, MongoDB, etc.). Foundational understanding of modern data pipelines, platform architecture, and data engineering workflows. Experience leading cross-disciplinary teams in agile or hybrid workflows. Strong discovery, prioritization, and roadmap development skills. Comfort leveraging AI-powered prototyping tools and emerging technologies to accelerate innovation. Nice to have: hands-on experience with lightweight AI engineering, scripting, or minimal-code prototyping to rapidly validate ideas. Salary Range Our estimated range for this role will be aligned with experience level and skill. Compensation packages are based on the skill level and experience each candidate brings to their role. There may also be a more senior or junior position available that could be a better fit with your expertise. Each level has its own compensation range. We pride ourselves on competitive salaries, and ensuring pay equity exists across our organization. We benchmark each position against existing employee competencies and 4As compensation data which includes geographic and agency size benchmarks. We also meet with department leaders 3x/year to ensure we are supporting employees in living into their full potential.  Our promotions are not limited to a specific time per year. Promotions are tied to performance.   Right To Work In The US You must be authorized to work in the US for any employer.  At this time, we are not sponsoring or providing assistance with obtaining work authorization. McKinney is a place where everyone can grow. Studies have shown that marginalized communities  such as women, LGBTQ+ and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. However you identify, and whatever background you bring with you, please apply if this is a role that would make you excited to come into work every day. We are in the office Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday on a hybrid schedule. We look forward to meeting you!