Technical Product Manager

Digital & Technology Team (D&T) is an integral division of HEINEKEN Global Shared Services Center. We are committed to making Heineken the most connected brewery. That includes digitalizing and integrating our processes, ensuring best-in-class technology, and embedding a data-driven culture. By joining us you will work in one of the most dynamic and innovative teams and have a direct impact on building the future of Heineken!

Would you like to meet the Team, see our office and much more? Visit our website: Heineken (heineken-dt.pl).

Our dream at HEINEKEN is to help our customers grow by serving them better, faster, and smarter with digital solutions. The last few years have seen a significant increase in the importance of digital solutions in the Commerce area at Heineken. These IT solutions have become a vital component in supporting the company's revenue. To ensure that this trend is supported and the IT in this area continues to grow, the new Commerce DevOps Hub is being established. The newly created organization, being an integral part of the Global Digital & Technology Function, is tasked with maintaining, but most importantly developing (functionally and technologically) IT solutions supporting the Commerce area at Heineken. Commerce DevOps Hub is located in Kraków and will include highly qualified IT professionals with direct contribution to both the technological development of the Heineken Commerce and the Hub itself.

Your Role: 

You will join the Product Engines team which as a group is responsible for delivering capabilities such as order capture, loyalty, trade promotion management and order visibility through Heineken’s diverse route to market.  Product Engines is a part of Global Digital Commerce.  

If you are the one for this role, you will lead the value capture of an existing product called Distributor Data Exchange (DDE).  It is used by Heineken’s operating countries in the Africa and Middle East Region (AME).  DDE serves our network of distributors in the region. It requires a driven individual to evaluate, influence and drive the scale up of DDE’s capabilities to more distributors.  

You will work with global and regional stakeholders to create roadmaps focused on capturing value. You will work with vendors to translate roadmaps to delivery milestones within budget, ensure application stability and drive seamless integration with other global commerce products. Your leadership will be instrumental in optimizing delivery, maintaining service reliability, and enhancing cross-functional collaboration in our Commerce IT landscape 

Your responsibilities will include: 

Product Delivery Management: 

• Lead the orchestration of large, complex products delivery spanning multiple solutions and product organizations, ensuring alignment of resources, timelines, and objectives across the organization. 

• Co-create a roadmap for products/solutions (in cooperation with Engineering Managers and Product Managers/Product Owners) 

• Support the end-to-end delivery of products ensuring on-time, high-quality releases with the right priority and a structured release management proc  

• Establish and maintain strong relationships with vendors and operating companies to ensure alignment with business objectives and product roadmaps.  Act as a bridge between your team and the rest of the organization, to align on needs for product deployments (alignment on environments availability and required inputs) 

• Grow and guard effective communication and coordination within the cross-tribe/org product delivery, by establishing communication channels and schedule 

• Monitor vendor KPIs, including SLA compliance, cost efficiency, quality of deliverables, and risk mitigation. 

• Implement structured escalation frameworks to address service disruptions, contract breaches, or non-compliance issues efficiently. 

Technology Strategy Alignment:  

• Actively engage in defining and shaping the technology strategy in Commerce landscape, ensuring alignment with business priorities and the organization's long-term technical roadmap. Elevate technology evolution discussions and its impact with relevant stakeholders within the organization 

• Support the Technology Director in implementing technical strategies, ensuring that engineering decisions align with both business objectives and technical standards.  

Risk & Issue Management: 

• Oversee the identification and resolution of cross-team issues and risks, proactively mitigating challenges that impact program success 

• Identify and resolve conflicts in program 

• Proactively resolve roadblocks and issues impacting the program 

Stakeholder Management: 

• Engage with a broad range of stakeholders, including senior leadership, cross functional team leadership, product teams, and external partners. 

• Communicate effectively across all levels of the organization, influencing decision-making at both operational and strategic levels. 

Release Orchestration/Package Management: 

• Coordinate and oversee releases. Orchestrate release processes, ensuring that all teams follow a consistent approach to releases, in alignment with the organization's release strategy. Coordinates product through all the development stages, Imposing DevOps practices standards.  

• Performance evaluation: Evaluate performance metrics for product delivery processes across the organization and provide potential solutions to improve efficiency and quality. 

Strategic Planning & Execution: 

• Collaborate with Product Managers/Product Owners, Engineering Managers, and senior leadership to ensure that projects align with broader organizational goals and technical strategies. 

You are a good match if you have: 

• 5+ years of experience as a Technical Program/Project Manager with a deep understanding of technology, products lifecycle and IT architecture, in a large-scale technical environment, managing large-scale cross-organizational programs. 

• Experience in managing and delivering successful software products for large companies, including a proper release management. 

• 2+ years experience in managing vendors and outsourced development teams 

• Hands-on experience with budget management   

• Deep understanding of software development, product development lifecycle, DevOps methodology, technical design, and architecture concepts. 

• Ability to engage in detailed technical discussions with software engineering teams. 

• Knowledge of and experience with Distributor management systems, with the ability to understand and challenge business processes/concepts to align technical programs with business goals 

• Adept at managing ambiguity, identifying dependencies and conflicts, and navigating complex technical and business challenges. 

• Hands-on experience in modern software product engineering frameworks, with the ability to lead large-scale agile environments and continuous pipelines. 

• Experience in working in ITIL framework 

• Skilled to identify and mitigate risks in cross-organization programs. 

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to effectively engage with senior leaders and influence decision-making across the organization.  

• Ability to indirectly influence and direct teams, as well as senior stakeholders (no direct authority, no direct reports) 

• Effective verbal and written communication with knowledge of how to effectively convey information between technical and non-technical stakeholders

Your Certification: 

• Chosen program management e.g. PgMP, MSP and/or project management e.g. PMP, PRINCE2 or similar 

• Chosen Agile certifications e.g. Scaled Professions Scrum (SPS), SAFe Agilist, Certified Scrum Master (CSM) or Professional Scrum Master (PSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or similar 

• DevOps certification (DevOps Foundation, Safe DevOps, etc.) 

At HEINEKEN Kraków, we take integrity and ethical conduct seriously. If someone has concerns about a possible violation of legal regulations indicated in Polish Whistleblowing Act or our Code of Business Conduct, we encourage them to speak up. Cases can be reported to global team or locally (in line with the local HGSS Whistleblowing procedure) by selecting proper option in this tool or by communicating it on hotline.