Cross-Program Product Lead Contractor

Who You Are

Ontic is seeking a Cross-Program Product Lead Contractor to help accelerate high-priority Product Management initiatives that span multiple product areas and business functions. The role will support the VP of Product by bringing structure, momentum, and cross-functional coordination to work that is important but not naturally owned by a single program-aligned Product Manager. This senior Product Management execution role, focused on cross-program work will work in coordination with program-aligned Product Managers and the Operations team to achieve objectives.

The ideal candidate for this hands-on contract role will be someone who can operate independently, quickly understand complex product and business context, organize ambiguous workstreams, and drive practical progress without heavy direction.

Key Responsibilities

GTM request process

• Define and help implement a clearer process for handling GTM-related Product requests.
• Create structure for CX enhancement requests, Sales/CX/AE strategic requests, larger revenue-risk requests, intake, triage, prioritization, and status communication.
• Reduce ad hoc request handling and create a more consistent way for field-facing teams to engage Product.

CX priority tracker

• Implement a tracker for quarterly CX priorities that gives business stakeholders better visibility than Jira alone.
• Include business-facing status, deployment context, Jira mapping, ownership, and clarity on whether changes are broadly available, customer-specific, or still in planning.

Roadmap management and Q4 roadmap support

• Support roadmap execution and process improvement, including the Q4 roadmap refresh, roadmap coordination, roadmap management approach, and formalized roadmap meetings, interviews, timing, and milestones.
• Help Product move toward a more repeatable and scalable roadmap operating model.

AI pricing and AI GTM coordination

• Help drive AI-related Product Management work, including finalizing AI pricing and coordinating AI GTM activity across programs.
• Partner with Product, GTM, Sales, CX, Enablement, and other stakeholders so AI commercialization is cohesive rather than fragmented across product areas.

Release notes overhaul

• Improve the release notes process, including curation, content quality, presentation, and delivery.
• Explore smart release notes that use AI to customize release information by customer based on inputs such as Jira tickets, call recordings, Slack channels, or other relevant signals.

FY2028 customer expansion and retention planning

• Partner with internal stakeholders to build a forward-looking customer expansion and retention plan.
• Help Product understand which customers need proactive attention, where roadmap impact may be required, and how customer risk or expansion opportunities should influence Product planning.

AI-enabled roadmap improvement

• Explore ways to use AI to improve roadmap planning and communication.
• Incorporate AI-derived customer information as roadmap input, use AI to evaluate roadmap options, and create customer-specific roadmap views or summaries.

Requirements

• 10 years of SaaS Product Management with 3 years managing complex products that rely on integrations
• Experience building a product strategy and a supporting roadmap
• New product full-lifecycle management experience
• B2B experience, including working with Fortune 500 customers, including managing the customer to achieve desired outcomes
• Very strong ability to drive cross-functional teams, schedules, and decisions
• Experience working with India based Engineering & QA
• Experience driving all aspects of the software development lifecycle with development teams - iteration themes, backlog grooming, story mapping, and user story creation
• Experience defining/prioritizing detailed product requirements
• Ability to think strategically and articulate a long-term product vision and then roll up your sleeves to get things done
• Ability to proactively monitor, analyze, and resolve release dependencies, issues, and risks
• Highly organized, self-motivated, and detail-oriented, with great follow-through on projects

What Success Looks Like

• A clearer GTM Product request process is defined and moving toward adoption.
• CX priorities are easier for stakeholders to track and understand.
• Q4 roadmap planning is better coordinated and more structured.
• Roadmap management has a clearer process, tool approach, and operating cadence.
• AI pricing and AI GTM work are better organized across programs.
• Release notes have a stronger process, format, and delivery model.
• Customer expansion and retention needs are better connected to roadmap planning.
• AI is being explored as a practical tool for improving roadmap inputs, evaluation, and customer-specific communication.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate has experience in some combination of the following:

• Product Management, Product Strategy, Product GTM, or product-led business execution.
• SaaS or enterprise software environments.
• Cross-functional execution across Product, GTM, CX, Sales, Product Marketing, Engineering, and leadership teams.
• Roadmap planning, product intake, prioritization, and stakeholder communication.
• GTM readiness, release communication, pricing, packaging, or commercialization work.
• Experience with AI products and using AI internally
• Turning ambiguous business and product problems into structured plans and practical deliverables.
• Working independently with senior stakeholders.

Important Qualities

• Senior judgment: Can operate with limited direction and identify where Product leadership input is needed.
• Practical execution: Moves quickly and creates lightweight structure without over-engineering process.
• Cross-functional fluency: Works effectively across Product, Operations, CX teams, Sales, Product Marketing, Engineering, and leadership.
• Clear communication: Produces crisp written artifacts and communicates confidently with executives and working teams.
• Ambiguity tolerance: Turns unclear cross-program needs into defined plans, workflows, and deliverables.
• Product judgment: Distinguishes between work that requires deep Product decision-making and work that needs structure, tracking, and coordination.