Seek Thermal is hiring a Product Manager for Fire Products to help shape product strategy and delivery for customers in the fire market. This onsite role in Santa Barbara, CA supports full lifecycle ownership, from market discovery and definition through development, launch, and sustaining improvements, with close collaboration across Engineering, Design, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Quality, Customer Service, and Finance.
What you’ll deliver
- Own product strategy and roadmap for Seek Thermal fire products, balancing customer needs, market opportunities, competitive dynamics, technical capability, cost, and business goals.
- Lead market assessments to identify opportunities for new products, innovation, and enhancements across hardware, software, accessories, and the overall user experience.
- Develop a strong understanding of firefighters, fire departments, distributors, and other stakeholders using voice-of-customer research, field observation, surveys, prototype evaluations, field testing, and ongoing engagement.
- Define target users, use cases, value propositions, and translate them into features, performance requirements, user experience, and packaging with cross-functional teams.
- Create and drive key planning materials, including business cases, ROI analyses, MRDs, PRDs, competitive analyses, and launch recommendations.
- Partner with Engineering and Design to convert market and user needs into clear product requirements, make informed feature, cost, and schedule tradeoffs, and maintain alignment through development.
- Lead cross-functional execution for new product development and sustaining initiatives, supporting delivery against scope, schedule, quality, and cost targets.
- Prioritize requirements and development work across multiple projects and lifecycle stages based on customer impact, strategic value, technical risk, and business priorities.
- Track competitive offerings, technology trends, customer feedback, field performance, and market changes, then apply insights to roadmap and product decisions.
- Serve as the voice of the customer and market, working with Engineering, Quality, Operations, and Customer Service to understand and prioritize field issues and sustaining improvements.
- Collaborate with Sales and Marketing on go-to-market strategy, messaging, training, sales tools, launch planning, and demand generation activities.
- Support launches and post-launch success by defining success metrics, tracking performance, gathering market feedback, and recommending corrective actions or follow-on investments.
- Engage with customers, channel partners, and the sales team for product discussions, demonstrations, field evaluations, and market development.
- Maintain clear communication with executive leadership and cross-functional stakeholders on roadmap priorities, decisions, risks, tradeoffs, schedules, and performance.
- Travel approximately 20% to 25% for customer visits, field research, industry events, product testing, and internal collaboration.
What you bring
- 5+ years of product management or closely related product development experience, with hardware and integrated software strongly preferred.
- Demonstrated success managing products across the full lifecycle from discovery and definition to development, launch, sustaining, and end-of-life.
- Strong customer orientation with the ability to turn user needs, behaviors, workflows, and motivations into actionable requirements.
- Strong strategic thinking, market analysis, organizational planning, and attention to detail.
- Ability to understand technical tradeoffs and risks and collaborate effectively with engineering counterparts.
- Experience developing product and go-to-market strategies and communicating recommendations to technical, commercial, and executive audiences.
- Strong analytical and financial acumen, including business cases, ROI, cost tradeoffs, dashboards, and performance metrics.
- Ability to lead through influence across Engineering, Design, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Quality, Customer Service, and Finance.
- Excellent written, verbal, presentation, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to manage multiple concurrent projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office.
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, Marketing, Product Management, or a related technical field (technical degree preferred).
- Experience in thermal imaging, fire service products, public safety, rugged professional equipment, or adjacent markets is preferred.
- Proven product launch experience; global manufacturing, supply chain, or procurement experience is preferred.
Compensation
USD 140,000 - 175,000 per year (salary).
Under the general supervision of the Vice President of Product & Marketing, this role owns product strategy, roadmap planning, lifecycle management, and cross-functional execution for Seek Thermal products serving the fire market, translating customer needs into differentiated product requirements and business priorities from concept through launch and sustaining.
