Lead Product Manager

Company

Cox Automotive - USA

Engineering / Product Development

Lead Product Manager

Manager - Non People LeaderHybrid - Ability to work remotely part of the week

No

Day

Compensation

Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $111,500.00 - $185,900.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.

As a Lead Product Manager for the Recon Solutions and Services release train within Cox Automotive, you will serve as a strategic driver behind the One Recon platform — a modern, unified technology hub consolidating fragmented legacy recon tools and manual processes into a single, seamless experience for Manheim auction sites and their reconditioning operations.

In this role, you will set strategic direction and shape the long-term vision for aligning existing legacy processes into the One Recon platform, translating organizational objectives and deep operational insight into a prioritized, outcomes-driven roadmap. You will lead alignment across multiple teams and workstreams — partnering with release train leadership, engineering, UX, and operations — while providing coaching and mentorship to other product managers on the team. Your responsibilities will span product strategy, platform vision, cross-functional leadership, stakeholder engagement at a senior level, go-to-market planning, and the identification of transformative opportunities that advance Manheim’s reconditioning capabilities.

This role demands a seasoned product leader with strong platform instincts, deep knowledge of APIs and integrations, and a proven ability to drive strategic clarity while maintaining execution accountability across a complex stakeholder landscape — ensuring the One Recon platform delivers lasting operational impact and supports Cox Automotive’s leadership in auction reconditioning services.

Primary Duties & Key Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Vision

• Own the strategic vision and multi-horizon roadmap for the One Recon platform, ensuring alignment with Cox Automotive’s organizational goals and Manheim’s operational priorities.

• Define and communicate a clear platform strategy that guides prioritization decisions, investment trade-offs, and long-term capability development.

• Lead quarterly and annual planning cycles in partnership with product leadership, shaping the direction of the release train and influencing resource allocation.

• Proactively identify and champion opportunities to modernize retail recon operations, replace legacy tooling, and eliminate manual processes at scale across Manheim’s auction network.

• Drive innovation across platform capabilities, recon workflow tooling, and vendor and auction system integrations.

Stakeholder & Market Insight

• Lead product discovery efforts to deeply understand the strategic and operational challenges facing auction site operators, translating insights into platform-level opportunities.

• Build and manage senior-level relationships with auction operators, operations partners, and internal stakeholders, ensuring the platform roadmap reflects both site-level needs and enterprise-wide priorities.

• Synthesize platform usage patterns, operational trends, and stakeholder feedback into strategic recommendations that inform roadmap decisions and investment priorities.

• Serve as the organizational authority on recon workflows, auction operations, and the systems and integrations that underpin the One Recon platform.

Execution & Delivery Oversight

• Provide strategic oversight of delivery across the release train, ensuring engineering, UX, and architecture teams are aligned on priorities and equipped to execute with quality and speed.

• Guide the definition of work at a platform level, ensuring work is scoped to deliver maximum business value and operational impact.

• Hold accountability for the health and integrity of the product backlog, partnering with product leadership and PMs to maintain clear requirements and delivery standards.

• Remove strategic blockers and make high-impact prioritization decisions that keep the team focused and moving forward.

Cross-Functional Leadership & Alignment

• Lead alignment across multiple teams and workstreams, driving a shared understanding of platform strategy, priorities, and progress among engineering, UX, operations, and product leadership.

• Represent Recon Solutions and Services in senior forums, communicating roadmap direction, platform health, and key decisions with clarity and confidence.

• Champion go-to-market readiness, including release communications, operator enablement, and documentation that drives adoption of new platform capabilities.

• Cultivate strong cross-functional partnerships across Cox Automotive to advance the One Recon platform’s role in the broader recon ecosystem.

Team Development & Mentorship

• Mentor and coach product managers on the team, elevating their skills in product discovery, prioritization, stakeholder management, and roadmap communication.

• Model best practices in product management and help establish team norms, frameworks, and ways of working that improve consistency and quality of output.

• Act as a thought partner and sounding board for PMs navigating complex stakeholder dynamics, ambiguous problem spaces, or competing priorities.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, Computer Science, Communications, or a related discipline and 6+ years of experience in product management, product ownership, or a related.

  • The right candidate could also have an equivalent combination of education and experience (Master’s and 4+ years’ experience | PHD and 2 years’ experience) OR 10 years of experience

• Experience owning end-to-end product lifecycle activities, including discovery, roadmapping, backlog management, and release delivery for a software product or platform.

• Experience managing a product backlog in an Agile delivery environment, including epic decomposition, story prioritization, and sprint/PI planning.

• Experience presenting product strategy, roadmap updates, and prioritization decisions to senior leadership

• Experience leading cross-functional alignment across matrixed stakeholder groups (Engineering, UX/Design, Architecture, Operations, etc.).

• Experience AI tools within a product management workflow (e.g., discovery synthesis, requirement drafting, prototyping, competitive analysis).

Preferred Requirements

• Experience sunsetting, retiring, or consolidating a legacy software product onto a unified platform.

• Experience with automotive, auction, wholesale, retail, or vehicle reconditioning operations.

• Experience leading platform migration or process-alignment initiatives across two or more disparate systems.

• Experience using AI tooling for rapid prototyping product features.

To be employed in this role, you’ll need to clear a pre-employment drug test. Cox Automotive does not currently administer a pre-employment drug test for marijuana for this position. However, we are a drug-free workplace, so the possession, use or being under the influence of drugs illegal under federal or state law during work hours, on company property and/or in company vehicles is prohibited.

The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company’s needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.Through groundbreaking technology and a commitment to stellar experiences for drivers and dealers alike, Cox Automotive employees are transforming the way the world buys, owns, sells – or simply uses – cars. Cox Automotive employees get to work on iconic consumer brands like Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book and industry-leading dealer-facing companies like vAuto and Manheim, all while enjoying the people-centered atmosphere that is central to our life at Cox. Benefits of working at Cox may include health care insurance (medical, dental, vision), retirement planning (401(k)), and paid days off (sick leave, parental leave, flexible vacation/wellness days, and/or PTO). For more details on what benefits you may be offered, visit our benefits page. Cox is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer – All qualified applicants/employees will receive consideration for employment without regard to that individual’s age, race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, ethnicity, citizenship, or any other characteristic protected by law. Cox provides reasonable accommodations when requested by a qualified applicant or employee with disability, unless such accommodations would cause an undue hardship.

EOE, including disability/vets