Archer Product Manager - Squad Leader

 

About Us

Archer provides holistic integrated risk management on a single, configurable platform that manages multiple dimensions of risk and drives accountability across your internal functions and extended third-party ecosystem.
The Archer Platform provides a common foundation for organizations to manage IT security risk, regulatory compliance, third party/supply chain risk, and more. Non-technical users can automate processes, streamline workflow, control user access, tailor the user interface, and report in real-time using the point-and click interface to build and manage business applications. Archer has been the leading risk management software platform for over 20 years, including acquisitions by RSA, Dell, Symphony Technology Group, and Cinven who recently launched Archer as an independent business unit. https://www.archerirm.com/
Archer is growing fast and we're scaling our Legal team to help enable and accelerate our growth. We're looking for someone with a growth mindset and pragmatic insight to help us build for the future.

Senior Product Manager (Foundry Squad Leader)

The Senior Product Manager owns outcomes for a defined product area and operates day-to-day as the Foundry Squad Leader for a cross-functional squad. This role is accountable for shaping what gets built (and why), aligning stakeholders, and ensuring high-quality execution that produces measurable customer and business impact.
The “Squad Leader” component is not a separate job—it is the operating model: the Senior PM is the single-threaded owner for squad priorities, tradeoffs, and delivery alignment, while partnering with Engineering and Design for solution design and implementation.

What you’ll do

1) Product strategy and roadmap ownership
• Own the product vision, objectives, and success metrics for your domain/vertical.
• Build and maintain a roadmap that aligns to company strategy, customer needs, and technical feasibility.
• Drive prioritization using evidence: customer impact, business value, risk, delivery cost, and dependencies.
• Identify growth opportunities through market research, competitive analysis, and trend monitoring.

2) Discovery and problem framing
• Lead discovery to identify the right problems (not just requested solutions).
• Partner with UX on research plans, prototypes, working groups/design partners, and validation.
• Convert learning into crisp problem statements, hypotheses, scope boundaries, and measurable outcomes.

3) Foundry Squad leadership (embedded responsibility)
As the Foundry Squad Leader, you will:
• Lead a cross-functional squad (Engineering, Design, Data/AI, QA, Ops, etc.) through planning, execution, and retrospectives.
• Translate strategy and customer insight into squad goals, a prioritized backlog, and delivery sequencing.
• Drive clarity on what/why/when, enabling the squad to execute how with minimal churn.
• Be the day-to-day decision maker for squad-level tradeoffs (scope, timing, quality, sequencing), escalating only when decisions cross domains or exceed squad authority.
• Maintain execution health: dependency management, risk tracking, stakeholder alignment, and consistent delivery cadence.

4) Delivery leadership with Engineering and Design
• Provide requirements that are testable, unambiguous, and tied to outcomes (not feature lists).
• Use ProductBoard/Jira (or equivalent) to keep roadmap items connected to build-level delivery and to ensure traceability.
• Partner with Engineering leadership on quarterly planning, scope shaping, and realistic sequencing.

5) Customer-facing responsibilities
• Represent your roadmap and outcomes in recurring customer roadmap communications (including monthly roadmap calls where applicable).
• Run/participate in working groups and design partner programs to refine direction and validate solutions.
• Support release communications and “how-to” enablement for admin/implementation-heavy audiences when needed.

6) Sales, GTM, and analyst enablement
• Partner with Product Marketing, Sales Engineering, and Professional Services on launch readiness and sales enablement.
• Contribute to RFP response knowledge bases and ensure your content stays current and defensible.
• Participate in analyst briefings and external narratives (demos, positioning input, briefings) when needed.

7) Business case and portfolio contribution
• Build business cases for new investments, pilots/betas, and optimizations.
• Use product performance and adoption metrics to adjust direction; incorporate feedback loops into roadmap evolution.
• Align with adjacent PMs/leads to ensure cohesive portfolio strategy and avoid duplicative work.

Scope and decision rights
• Owns: squad backlog priority, squad execution tradeoffs, problem framing, requirements quality, and outcome measurement for the assigned domain.
• Influences: vertical/portfolio roadmap via evidence, customer insights, and delivered outcomes.
• Escalates: cross-vertical prioritization conflicts, major resourcing shifts, strategic direction changes, and large commercial/contractual commitments.

Success measures (what “good” looks like)

Within 6–12 months, you are expected to demonstrate:
• A clear product strategy with measurable goals and a roadmap that stakeholders trust.
• Consistent squad delivery against agreed objectives with visible reduction in ambiguity and churn.
• Strong discovery discipline: validated problems, fast learning loops, and fewer “rebuild” cycles.
• Tangible customer and business outcomes (adoption, retention/expansion impact, cycle time reduction, quality improvements).
• High-confidence enablement: sales/support readiness and credible external narratives.

Required qualifications
• 6–10+ years in product management (or equivalent product ownership) with repeated delivery of customer-facing outcomes.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams through influence and crisp decision-making.
• Strong skills in problem framing, prioritization, and stakeholder management.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and making tradeoffs with incomplete information.
• Experience translating customer/business requirements into delivery-ready plans and requirements.

Preferred qualifications
• Prior experience in a squad/pod operating model.
• Experience in GRC / IRM / compliance / risk domains (or similarly complex B2B enterprise software).
• Familiarity with beta programs, pilots, and iterative rollout approaches.
• Track record partnering with Product Marketing on launches and enablement.

Internal explainer: why “PM as Foundry Squad Leader”

What it means: Product Managers lead through squads. This is the mechanism for turning strategy into execution with clear ownership.
Why we do it: faster decisions, fewer handoffs, tighter accountability, and better outcome delivery.
What doesn’t change: functional leadership stays with Engineering/Design; this is not a people-manager role unless explicitly stated.
How it’s evaluated: outcomes delivered, clarity of prioritization, stakeholder trust, and measurable product impact.

Additional Information 

About Archer’s Culture and Work Environment:
Our people, team collaboration and dynamic leadership is the centerpiece of our great culture and the reason for Archer’s 25 years of success. Over the years, many companies and global organizations have been faced with tough decisions. Layoffs, reorganizations, acquisitions, and mergers. Yet, throughout these challenging times, Archer has exemplified strong innovation and growth and a commitment to our employees.Why is this possible? Collaboration is the key to our success. It inspires great innovation and innovative ideas. It is why Archer's is a household name in the GRC space. Companies, from F500 – F1000, come to Archer first - for our thought leadership and for our ability to meet customers where they are. As we continue to grow and evolve, our focus will remain the same: continue innovating, support our customers and employees and continue driving the risk management industry to new levels. 

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice at management discretion based on business need.  

Archer is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Archer are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, protected veteran status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Archer will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training. All Archer employees are expected to support this policy and contribute to an environment of equal opportunity.   

If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application process, please contact talent-acquisition@archerirm.com. All employees must be legally authorized to work in Country they are applying for. Archer and its approved consultants will never ask you for a fee to process or consider your application for a career with Archer. Archer reserves the right to amend or withdraw any job posting at any time, including prior to the advertised closing date. 

Pay Transparency Notice: We’re committed to fair and transparent pay practices. In line with state pay transparency laws, the salary range for this role is available upon request. Please contact our Talent Acquisition team at Talent-Acquisition@archerirm.com for the range and related compensation details. Actual pay may vary based on location, experience, skills, and internal equity.