Product Manager, Custom Engineering Applications

The Opportunity

We are seeking an experienced Product Manager who will be responsible for the strategic ownership, evolution, and performance of Black & Veatch’s portfolio of custom‑built and hybrid engineering applications used internally by Engineering professionals across Black & Veatch. The portfolio includes COTS plugins embedded in engineering platforms, bespoke applications, workflow and analytics solutions, and COTS adjacent hybrid platforms that augment engineering delivery, operations, and advisory services, by managing metadata, content, and workflow of 2D/3D engineering drawings, and supporting constructs. The Product Manager must demonstrate a strong understanding of engineering workflows, design data lifecycles, and operational intricacies of sustaining applications that enable engineering delivery. 

Operating within the Black & Veatch Digital Product Operating Model (DPOM), the Product Manager ensures that application investments are intentionally selected, objectively prioritized, architecturally sound, and continuously measured to deliver enduring business value—not one‑off project outputs. 

Intake, Qualification & Demand Shaping 

• Own and evolve the portfolio intake process for custom and hybrid engineering applications, ensuring all requests are framed as customer or user problems, not solution requests. 
• Establish clear intake criteria, qualification thresholds, and decision artifacts aligned to DPOM Opportunity Intake & Screening practices (e.g., problem statement clarity, user personas, value hypotheses, and risk)
• Partner with engineering, architecture, cybersecurity, and business leaders to shape demand early, reducing low‑value or duplicative requests before they enter delivery

Strategic & Quantified Portfolio Prioritization

• Design and operate a quantitative prioritization model for the application portfolio that balances:  
  • Business value and user impact
  • Risk reduction (security, reliability, compliance)
  • Technical debt and sustainability
  • Strategic alignment to enterprise and digital priorities
• Use objective scoring, trade‑off analysis, and capacity‑aware planning to support fact‑based investment decisions and funding conversations
• Facilitate portfolio‑level reviews and decision forums as part of DPOM governance rituals

Portfolio Rationalization & Future‑State Design

• Support application rationalization efforts to assess the current state across relevance, redundancy, fitness for purpose, and total cost of ownership. 
• Define and socialize a target future‑state portfolio, including:  
  • Sunset, consolidate, modernize, or invest decisions
  • Migration paths to platforms, shared services, or products where appropriate
• Ensure rationalization decisions are anchored in measurable outcomes, not anecdotal preferences

Key Responsibilities

Application Sustainability & Engineering Context Ownership

• Establish authoritative visibility and control over the portfolio
• Own the ongoing sustainability, operations, and functionality of custom, customized, and COTS‑adjacent engineering applications across their full lifecycle
• Ensure applications remain reliable and performant, accounting for software version changes, data integrity, and updated business needs
• Make informed decisions related to data structures, data flow, 2D/3D model manipulation and upstream/ downstream integrations. 
• Proactively manage technical debt, vendor dependencies, and platform constraints

Architecture, Security, Reliability & Scalability Advocacy

• Partner closely with architecture, platform engineering, and cybersecurity teams to ensure that product roadmaps explicitly include investments that improve:  
  • Security posture and compliance
  • System reliability, resilience, and maintainability
  • Scalability and performance aligned to future demand
• Balance near‑term feature delivery with intentional investment in foundational quality as required by DPOM’s “Secure, Resilient & Scalable” principle

Metrics‑Driven Product Management Culture

• Define and own product success metrics (input and outcome metrics) aligned to the DPOM Success Metrics & Governance framework
• Establish regular operating rhythms (WBRs, portfolio reviews, roadmap checkpoints) where metrics, not anecdotes, drive decisions
• Create a culture where progress, performance, and trade‑offs are visible, trusted, and continuously refined, reinforcing accountability across teams

Cross‑Functional Leadership & Enablement

• Act as the single‑threaded owner for assigned products and portfolio segments, coordinating across engineering, UX, architecture, cybersecurity, and business stakeholders
• Coach teams and partners in product mindset vs. project mindset, reinforcing DPOM behaviors and expectations throughout the lifecycle

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in product management, digital platforms, or complex application portfolios, preferably in engineering, infrastructure, or asset‑intensive environments.  
• Demonstrated experience implementing structured intake, prioritization, and portfolio rationalization approaches.  
• Strong analytical capability with experience designing quantitative prioritization and decision frameworks.  
• Experience as a product manager for custom applications that support engineering delivery, including plugins, add-ons/bolt-ons, and COTS adjacent applications, such as Autodesk, Bentley/ProjectWise, SmartPlant or similar engineering design systems. 
• Proven ability to define, operationalize, and use product performance metrics to drive outcomes. 
• Demonstrable expertise in operating models and portfolio management; comfort with DPOM-like governance, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement. 
• Excellence in cross-functional leadership, stakeholder management, and clear communication with technical and business audiences.  
• Track record of managing long-living, business-critical applications used daily, globally, by engineers, balancing business needs with stability, security, maintainability and operational risk. 
• Proven ability to partner with Engineering, Security, Architecture, and AI leaders. 
• Bachelor’s in Computer Science / Engineering or equivalent experience. 
• Experience working within or implementing a product operating model (DPOM, SAFe, or equivalent).  
• Familiarity with secure and scalable architecture, cloud platforms, and enterprise integration patterns.  
• Experience modernizing legacy or bespoke engineering applications into sustainable, platform‑oriented solutions. 

Communication and Cultural Fit 

• Exceptional ability to engage and influence business and technical stakeholders, translating complex concepts into clear language.  
• Skilled in building consensus across diverse teams and driving alignment on strategic priorities.  
• Demonstrates a strong cultural fit for Digital and IT organizations, embracing agility, collaboration, and continuous learning. 

Success Metrics 

• Clear, disciplined intake pipelines with fewer low‑value requests entering delivery.  
• Portfolio investment decisions that are transparent, defensible, and metric-driven.  
• A rationalized application landscape with a well‑articulated future state. 
• Measurable improvements in application security, reliability, and scalability. 
• Teams and stakeholders confidently use data and metrics to guide decisions. 
• Reliability and performance (SLO attainment, incident MTTR, incident reduction). 

Minimum Qualifications

All applicants must be able to complete pre-employment onboarding requirements (if selected) which may include any/all of the following: criminal/civil background check, drug screen, and motor vehicle records search, in compliance with any applicable laws and regulations.

Work Environment/Physical Demands

Hybrid or flexible work options may be offered after the first 90 days of employment based upon manager discretion, job performance and work assignments.

Salary Plan

Job Grade