Product Manager, GaaS and Cost Optimization - IT

American Airlines Group - Dallas, TX

Full-time - Mid Level

Dallas, TX

Air Transportation

About the position

As a Product Manager for GaaS and Cost Optimization at American Airlines, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the vision, strategy, and implementation of our product portfolio within the IT department. This position is designed for a seasoned and energetic individual who is ready to tackle challenges with flexibility and grace. You will collaborate closely with diverse cross-functional teams, including Application, Engineering, Architecture, Finance, and Vendor Management, to ensure that our products not only meet but exceed customer expectations. Your strategic evaluation of industry technology trends will be crucial as you spearhead rapid incubation and adoption of innovative solutions within the company. Additionally, you will maintain a strong operational focus on managing the service availability of our enterprise infrastructure footprint. In this role, you will define and communicate the product vision and strategy that aligns with the company's business goals. You will set product-level OKRs and lead the prioritization of the backlog of work to achieve those outcomes. As an influencer, you will bring stakeholders, customers, and squads together around a shared vision to meet the OKRs, focusing on building consensus and buy-in. Conducting market research and competitive analysis will be essential to identify opportunities for product enhancements and new product development. You will develop and maintain a product roadmap that outlines the strategic direction and prioritization of features and releases, collaborating with engineering teams to design, develop, and launch new products and features. Your responsibilities will also include creating detailed product specifications and user stories to guide the development process, ensuring timely delivery of products by managing project timelines, and coordinating cross-functional teams. You will serve as the voice of the customer within the organization, ensuring that customer needs and pain points are addressed while developing and maintaining strong relationships with key customers and partners. Managing vendor relationships and collaborating with vendor management for designing optimal contracts will be part of your duties, as well as optimizing cloud costs by rearchitecting solutions and creating automation patterns for autoscaling workloads. You will create standards in cloud environments and maintain resource consistency by developing tagging frameworks, build guardrails to improve the security posture of Cloud environments, and manage the health, availability, and lifecycle of Governance platform components across American Airlines with a focus on automated CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate the product vision and strategy aligned with the company's business goals.
• Set product level OKR's and lead prioritization of backlog of work to achieve those outcomes.
• Bring stakeholders, customers, and squads around on a shared vision to meet the OKR's, focusing on building consensus and buy-in.
• Conduct market research and competitive analysis to identify opportunities for product enhancements and new product development.
• Develop and maintain a product roadmap that outlines the strategic direction and prioritization of features and releases.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to design, develop, and launch new products and features.
• Create detailed product specifications and user stories to guide the development process.
• Ensure timely delivery of products by managing project timelines and coordinating cross-functional teams.
• Serve as the voice of the customer within the organization, ensuring that customer needs and pain points are addressed.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with key customers and partners.
• Manage vendor relationships and collaborate with vendor management for designing optimal contracts.
• Optimize cloud costs by rearchitecting solutions and creating automation patterns for autoscaling workloads.
• Create standards in cloud environments and maintain resource consistency by developing tagging frameworks.
• Build guardrails to improve the security posture of Cloud environments by developing Policy-as-Code framework and promote it via self-service.
• Manage health, availability, and life cycle of Governance platform components across American with focus on automated CI/CD pipelines.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience required in Computer Science, Information Systems Management, or related field.
• 7 years of experience with infrastructure technologies and software development.
• 5 years of experience in public cloud- Azure or AWS.
• 3 years of technology leadership experience, including development, infrastructure, and architecture teams.
• 3 years of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) experience including Terraform and ARM templates to automate cloud workloads.
• 2 years of Public Cloud Governance experience for implementing patterns around Reliability, Security, Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence and Performance Efficiency.
• 2 years of experience in leveraging Agile, DevOps, and Cloud practices to manage technology delivery.

Nice-to-haves

• Proven experience in growing engineering practices such as Infrastructure as code, containerization, source control management, CI/CD, and Infrastructure test automation.
• Proven ability to manage internal and external resources, as well as manage relationships with 3rd party providers and partners.
• Demonstrated ability to solve, and to lead others in solving, complex analytical problems.
• Industry certification in Azure or AWS or FinOps.

Benefits

• Travel Perks: Access to 365 destinations on more than 6,800 daily flights across our global network.
• Health Benefits: Access to health, dental, prescription and vision benefits from day one, including virtual doctor visits and flexible spending accounts.
• Wellness Programs: Tools, resources, and support to help you be the best version of yourself.
• 401(k) Program: Available upon hire with employer contributions after one year, depending on the workgroup.
• Additional Benefits: Employee Assistance Program, pet insurance, and discounts on hotels, cars, cruises, and more.