Vice President, Digital Product Management

Overview

Major League Soccer is seeking a strong, entrepreneurial Digital Product leader to head its technology product management team. This person will complete strategic roadmaps driving Fan growth initiatives. With a comprehensive strategy and vision, this role will bring cohesion to the end-to-end Fan experience through digital product innovation, identifying growth opportunities and creating measurable value for our Fans and our League through three core responsibility areas: a) Fan data acquisition, b) product innovation, and c) personalization. This Product leader has a solid background in developing a deep understanding of consumers’ needs (Fans) and translating them into a useful roadmap of features and functionality that helps bring those needs to life.

In specific, this role owns product visions, roadmaps, and technical management of digital products. This includes the MLSSoccer.com website and related sub/micro sites, MLS League apps, MLS commercial digital products, eCommerce and MarTech (CMS/publishing tools, CRM products, CDP/personalization, and other marketing technologies).

This candidate should promote a culture anchored in data to experiment features, validate outcomes, drive insights, and handle the business both tactically and strategically. You will be responsible for fostering a strong agile discipline and inspiring teams to continuously improve delivery evidenced through key agility metrics. This role will partner with other MLS Technology leaders to influence end-state architecture and drive secure, resilient, performant, and scalable technology solutions that deliver imperative Fan and League capabilities.

This candidate will operate in a high-growth space with a fast-changing landscape that will require you to constantly adapt, learn and reposition the teams to better serve our Fans. You’ll model adaptability by encouraging continuous evolution to our digital product strategy considering industry trends, emerging solutions, new insights and changing Fan and League needs.

Responsibilities

• Collect and document requirements, manage roadmaps, and prioritize backlog needs while aligning those efforts to ensure marketing, content and digital collaborators have a full view into the technology pipeline.
• Develop and maintain relationships with key technology vendors, including commercial partners and sponsors, using those relationships to innovate on emerging capabilities and features that can drive Fan engagement.
• Lead all aspects of our digital product technology strategy including planning, prioritization, requirements, experimentation, and driving execution to achieve growth critical metrics and optimize our end-to-end Fan experience.
• Serve as our digital marketing technology expert, creating a multi-year roadmap for our MarTech stack and engage efficiently and optimally with key partners across League business functions and Clubs to orchestrate Omni-channel journeys.
• Leverage data-driven decisions and experimentation approaches (e.g., A/B testing, hold outs, control groups) to build learning agendas, analyze results, and integrate findings into the organization for on-going planning and OKR pivoting.
• Additional responsibilities as assigned.
• Support the management of ongoing forecasting and reporting of the financial performance related to technology programs. Demonstrable ability to prioritize and deliver on multiple concurrent initiatives that have significant financial impact with a P&L mentality.
• Develop and build measures, metrics and tracking to ensure value is collected from all use cases being developed and deployed. Partner with our Analytic team to design & develop appropriate mechanisms for tracking & performance management (e.g., dashboards, reports).
• Partner with our Marketing, Content & Digital teams to define the roadmap, make our bets and lead delivery of an industry-leading digital Fan product portfolio. Identify, socialize, and deliver new innovative opportunities to bring personalization and our content to life across all our digital Fan experiences.
• Lead analytical, hypothesis-guided methodologies to growing Digital Product innovation, including emerging features that drive Fan nurturing, engagement, and retention. Size and prioritize new technology opportunities including the case, path to growth, execution plans, and team member concurrence.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant experience with at least 5+ years of experience in a senior Product leadership role; must have at least one digital product in-market, preferably in a fast-moving B2C company with 1M+ use
• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree or any combination of education, training and experience in digital product design, UX/UI design, human-computer interaction, or a related field

Required Skills

• Ability to drive initiatives that substantially increase the team’s impact, influencing decisions and pursuing big ideas through compelling storytelling.
• High-level of commitment to a quality work product and organizational ethics, integrity and compliance
• Propensity to thrive in ambiguity with a flexible operating range and constantly call into question assumptions and biases and motivating teams to do the same.
• Strong problem-solving skills to take an ambiguous problem and develop a structured and logical framework to define the problem, analyze data and make practical recommendations.
• Ability to be hands-on and go deep on a problem, uncover root causes, and find pockets of opportunity anywhere / everywhere via technology & design principles.
• A fascination with innovation and technology and an expert understanding of digital tools and trends.
• Naturally entrepreneurial with a ‘get-stuff-done’ approach.
• Experience in taking measured risks backed by data and strong hypotheses coupled with ‘big picture thinking’ that defines and drives toward an ambitious future vision for our Fans, Clubs, and the League.
• Demonstrated decision making and problem-solving skills
• Ability to travel and to work non-traditional hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays
• Experienced authority in building and owning product roadmaps for both the longer term (strategic) and short term (tactical) and getting agreement across the company.
• Great written and verbal communication and can successfully spread product thinking throughout the organization.
• Can shape the look and feel of an experience based on your vision and taste and identify great design and provide meaningful critiques of discrepancies/opportunities in the team's work.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast paced, collaborative environment
• Good interpersonal skills and the ability to effectively communicate, both verbally and in writing
• Knowledge and/or hands-on experience with cloud-based technology/platforms including – personalization, headless content management, data analytics, identity, ecommerce, and API-first (MACH) architectures.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Suite

Total Rewards

Starting Base Salary: $200,000 – $235,000. MLS/SUM base salaries are contingent upon several factors including individual qualifications, market financials, and operational business needs.

We are committed to providing a Total Rewards package that attracts, supports, engages, and retains talent through the following:

• Career & Professional Development – on the job training, feedback, and on-going educational opportunities to continue your personal and professional development.
• Employee Engagement – office perks, discounts and employee events that go “beyond the traditional paycheck” to make you feel a part of our team and inspire you to elevate the Game!
• Benefits – comprehensive and competitive medical, dental, and vision benefits, as well as a suite of programs to promote well-being including a $500 Wellness Reimbursement. A generous PTO offering, and hybrid Office/Remote Work Schedule are also offered to promote Work-Life balance.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.