Product Manager

JOB SUMMARY

The Product Manager, TMS & Operational Communications owns the day-to-day product health, configuration, user experience, and continuous improvement of EASEs core transportation management system and operational communications platforms. The lasting problem this role exists to solve: the systems EASE operators depend on every day are healthy, current, well configured, easy to use, and support freight moving without unnecessary friction.

Reporting to the VP / Head of Product Foundations, this role serves as the accountable product owner for McLeod and sits within the Operate function of EASEs brokerage model (Sell, Buy, and Operate). The role owns TMS workflows, configuration, product experience, adoption, and the business-facing roadmap. Platform & Analytics owns the underlying McLeod database, infrastructure, performance, backup, recovery, and backend reliability.

Success is measured by TMS health, process compliance and business outcomes, not by the number of tickets closed or changes completed. McLeod and operational communications should enable employees to execute consistently, reduce manual workarounds, recover quickly from user-impacting issues, and contribute to SPEED (Shipments Per Ease Employee Daily), EASEs north star operational metric.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES

TMS Product Strategy & Roadmap

- Own the product roadmap for McLeod TMS, translating operational needs, recurring friction, vendor capabilities, and business priorities into a clear sequence of improvements.

- Maintain a living view of TMS capabilities, configuration, open issues, enhancement requests, and roadmap decisions so the organization has one source of truth for the health and direction of McLeod.

- Partner with the VP / Head of Product Foundations to determine when a need should be solved through McLeod configuration or capability versus another EASE product or platform.

Outcome Ownership & Measurement

- Own the outcome metrics for this role, such as user-impacting TMS issue volume and resolution time, workflow adoption, manual workarounds eliminated, release adoption, configuration quality, and operational communications service performance.

- Set each objective with a baseline, a target, a date, and a counter-metric, working with Platform & Analytics on metric definitions and instrumentation where needed.

- Report progress in terms of TMS health, user impact, and business outcomes. Ticket counts, configuration changes, and releases completed are not measures of success on their own.

TMS Health & Lifecycle Management

- Maintain a current health view of McLeod, including open defects, recurring user issues, support cases, version currency, configuration risks, license utilization, and vendor commitments.

- Own business-side triage and escalation for TMS issues, ensuring every material problem has a clear owner, priority, communication path, and path to resolution.

- Keep McLeod in good standing by proactively managing lifecycle needs, support status, release readiness, documentation, and known product risks before they become operational disruptions.

Workflow, Configuration & User Experience

- Own McLeod workflow and configuration decisions for EASE operations, working directly with users to understand how orders, dispatch, carrier assignment, status management, billing handoffs, and other core workflows are performed.

- Identify and resolve recurring friction, duplicate entry, unnecessary steps, and manual workarounds, and determine whether the right response is configuration, process change, training, vendor capability, or a separate EASE product.

- Maintain clear and consistent standards for TMS configuration and functional ownership so changes are intentional, documented, tested, and aligned with how EASE operates.

- Partner with Product Foundations, Operations, and affected product pillars when TMS workflow changes have downstream impact on AMMI, Forge, integrations, reporting, or other internal products.

Release, Change & Adoption Management

- Own business readiness for McLeod releases and significant configuration changes, including impact assessment, testing coordination, stakeholder communication, training needs, cutover planning, and adoption follow-up.

- Maintain a predictable cadence for reviewing McLeod release notes, evaluating relevant capabilities, and deciding what EASE should adopt, defer, or decline.

- Track whether new functionality is actually being used as intended and address adoption gaps, workflow confusion, or configuration issues after launch.

McLeod Vendor & Capability Management

- Serve as EASEs primary product counterpart to McLeod for product capability, support escalation, roadmap awareness, enhancement requests, and recurring service reviews.

- Maintain visibility into McLeod commitments, open support items, product limitations, and upcoming changes that may affect EASE operations or other product roadmaps.

- Evaluate new McLeod modules and capabilities against business need, expected value, implementation effort, and overlap with existing EASE products before recommending adoption.

Operational Communications Platforms

- Own the business product experience for EASEs operational phone and communications platforms, including call flows, routing, queues, number strategy, reporting needs, user experience, and ongoing platform improvement.

- Work with IT Services and vendors to ensure operational communications remain reliable, appropriately configured, supported, and aligned with how teams communicate with customers and carriers.

Cross-Functional Coordination

- Partner with Platform & Analytics on McLeod backend health, upgrades, database performance, infrastructure, backup, recovery, and technical incident response while maintaining clear ownership of the business-facing TMS experience.

- Work with Product Foundations, Carrier Product, Shipper Product, Engineering, IT Services, and the Partnership Ecosystem to coordinate changes that cross system boundaries without taking ownership of their respective products or technical domains.

Qualifications

QUALIFICATIONS

Education

- Bachelors degree in business, supply chain, information systems, transportation, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

- Product management, McLeod, transportation technology, or related certifications are a plus.

Experience

- 5+ years of experience in transportation operations, product management, business systems, TMS administration, or a related role.

- Demonstrated experience owning or supporting a transportation management system in a production environment; McLeod experience strongly preferred.

- Experience translating operational workflows and user needs into system configuration, process improvements, requirements, or vendor enhancement requests.

- Experience coordinating releases, testing, user communications, training, or adoption for business-critical systems.

- Experience working with technology vendors and cross-functional technical teams to resolve issues and improve platform performance.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

- Strong working knowledge of transportation management system workflows, including order entry, dispatch, carrier assignment, shipment status, and operational exception management.

- Ability to distinguish between a system configuration issue, business process issue, user adoption issue, vendor defect, and need for a separate product capability.

- McLeod TMS experience strongly preferred, including familiarity with configuration, user workflows, support processes, and release management.

- Comfort using operational data, support trends, and user feedback to identify recurring issues, prioritize improvements, and measure product health.

- Ability to treat a core enterprise system as a product, with users, outcomes, lifecycle ownership, adoption, and a continuously managed roadmap.

- Strong vendor management, issue escalation, facilitation, and stakeholder coordination skills.

- Clear written communication for requirements, release communications, documentation, support escalation, and decision records.

- Entrepreneurial mindset with a bias for action, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to operate effectively in a high-accountability environment.