Sr. Product Manager – Warehouse Execution Systems (WES) & Automation

Fortna Systems is seeking a Senior Product Manager to lead Warehouse Execution Systems (WES) and automation product delivery for complex, automated distribution centers. This is a hands-on, customer-facing role focused on defining and evolving software capabilities that orchestrate work end to end, with the use of AI to strengthen requirements quality and execution readiness.

Role Focus

Own and evolve product capabilities for Fortna’s Warehouse Execution Systems (WES) and related automation domains. The role emphasizes practical understanding of warehouse workflows and the ability to translate operational realities into implementation-ready software requirements, integrations, and acceptance criteria. Collaboration spans customers, operations teams, and cross-functional partners across product, engineering, architecture, data science, and delivery.

Responsibilities

• Own and contribute to the WES product roadmap, balancing strategic investment choices, customer requirements, technical improvements, and market opportunities.
• Engage directly with customers and warehouse operations teams to capture Voice of Customer, understand operational challenges, validate concepts, and demonstrate product capabilities.
• Participate in pre-sales activities including Solution Design, customer workshops, testing, and warehouse visits.
• Evaluate requirements using criteria such as customer value, operational impact, technical feasibility, development effort, and cross-customer applicability.
• Identify where customer-specific needs can be converted into configurable and reusable product capabilities.
• Maintain a clear separation between base product functionality and customer-specific customization.
• Communicate WES capabilities and product direction effectively to technical, operational, commercial, and executive stakeholders.
• Define product capabilities spanning receiving, decant, inventory, storage, replenishment, allocation, picking, consolidation, packing, shipping, and exception management.
• Define how WES should prioritize, release, route, sequence, and balance work across automated and manual areas in a distribution center.
• Translate operational needs into features, epics, workflows, and user stories suitable for implementation.
• Ensure requirements cover business rules, acceptance criteria, configuration, UI behavior, integrations, payloads, exception handling, and expected system behavior.
• Partner with Engineering and Architecture to understand technical implications, integration dependencies, and design trade-offs.
• Collaborate with Data Science on algorithms and optimization used for allocation, replenishment, work release, routing, prioritization, and resource balancing.
• Maintain a refined backlog and participate in backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and PI or release planning within Agile ceremonies.
• Own product quality across the development lifecycle by validating delivered functionality against intended operational outcomes.
• Ensure test scenarios account for positive, negative, edge, exception, concurrency, integration failure, and recovery conditions where applicable.
• Use AI tools to challenge requirements, identify missing scenarios and ambiguous requirements, surface dependencies, assess downstream impacts, and detect implementation gaps before work reaches Development.
• Use AI-assisted quality checks to ensure stories include sufficient functional and technical context, reducing repeated clarification between Product/BA and Development.
• Develop reusable AI prompts, workflows, or agents for requirements analysis, story quality, documentation, test scenario generation, impact analysis, and product knowledge retrieval.
• Explore AI integration with Jira, Confluence, product documentation, SRS documents, test cases, and other knowledge sources.
• Ensure AI-generated output is reviewed and validated by accountable Product team members; AI supports product judgment rather than replacing it.
• Use learnings from defects and customer testing to improve requirements quality and prevent similar issues upstream.
• Provide product leadership across Product Owners, BAs, UX, Engineering, QA, SSA, Data Science, Sales, and Solutions Design.
• Mentor Product Managers, Product Owners, and BAs on warehouse domain knowledge, requirements quality, product thinking, and customer engagement.
• Drive alignment when customer requirements, product strategy, technical constraints, and project timelines compete.
• Promote consistent standards, templates, documentation, and product development practices.
• Serve as a WES product SME and represent the product with customers and internal stakeholders independently.

Key Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Computer Science, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain, Engineering, or a related field.
• 7+ years of relevant experience in Product Management, Product Ownership, Solution Architecture, Business/System Analysis, or software solution delivery.
• 5+ years of experience in warehouse execution, warehouse automation, material handling, or related supply chain software.
• Experience with WES, WCS, WMS, or comparable warehouse execution platforms.
• Strong understanding of warehouse operations, inventory management, fulfillment, and work orchestration.
• Experience with automation technologies such as ASRS, AutoStore, GTP, AMRs/AGVs, robotics, conveyors, or sortation systems.
• Experience translating complex warehouse operations into scalable software requirements.
• Strong understanding of Agile software development, Jira, product roadmaps, epics, stories, and backlog management.
• Working knowledge of APIs, payloads, system integrations, and event or message-driven architectures.
• Strong customer-facing communication skills and ability to work with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to use generative AI tools in product management or software delivery workflows beyond basic content generation.
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally to customer sites as required.

Technologies

• AI tools
• Jira
• Confluence
• APIs
• Event/message-driven architectures
• WES, WCS, WMS
• ASRS, AutoStore, GTP
• AMRs/AGVs
• PLC/Controls, Robotics
• Conveyors
• Sortation systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct Product Management experience with a commercial WES/WCS product.
• Experience with work orchestration, allocation, replenishment, routing, task management, inventory optimization, or resource balancing.
• Experience delivering software for large-scale automated distribution centers.
• Experience with optimization algorithms, simulation, analytics, AI, or machine learning in warehouse operations.
• Experience creating AI agents, automated quality-review workflows, or AI-assisted Product/BA processes.
• Experience connecting AI with enterprise knowledge sources such as Jira, Confluence, requirements, and test cases.
• Experience with business cases, commercialization, roadmap prioritization, and product lifecycle management.
• SAFe, CSPO, Pragmatic Product Management, or equivalent certification.

Success Outcomes

• Understands how orders, inventory, people, software, and automation interact in a distribution center and articulates how WES should address the operational problem.
• Comfortable discussing operational workflows with customers, defining product capabilities, reviewing integration approaches with architects, refining requirements with Development, and validating outcomes on the warehouse floor.
• Uses AI as a force multiplier by challenging requirements for missing scenarios, improving story completeness, and reducing clarification cycles while creating repeatable AI-enabled processes that raise productivity and quality across the Product organization.
• Builds ownership from customer problem through scalable product solution and successful execution, beyond backlog management.

Compensation and Location

Location: Atlanta, GA (onsite)

Base Salary Range: USD 115,900 to 173,800 per year

Education: Bachelor’s degree

Experience: 7+ years