Design Manager

Key areas of responsibility

• Own and develop the product roadmap aligned with market need and business strategy.
• Define a clear product vision, translating customer problems into actionable requirements.
• Prioritise features and capabilities across multiple platforms and constraints.
• Communicate vision clearly to cross-functional teams, customers, and stakeholders.

• Manage hardware product delivery across the full lifecycle; concept, design, prototyping, production.
• Own schedule, quality, cost and technical risk across product lines.
• Make trade-off decisions between performance, cost, timeline and capability in ambiguous environments.
• Drive integration and manufacturing readiness; understand supply chain constraints and logistics.
• Ensure products meet specification, reliability, cost targets and customer expectations.

• Build and lead a small team (design, engineering, and operations as needed).
• Support your team through technical decisions, problem-solving and career development.
• Work cross-functionally with engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and customer teams.
• Mentor engineers and establish a culture of accountability and pragmatism.

• Maintain direct relationships with customers; understand their operational needs and constraints.
• Respond quickly to market feedback and customer requests.
• Contribute to go-to-market strategy, pricing, business cases and bid development.
• Ensure customer and end-user needs are reflected in product priorities and decision-making. 

• Identify and escalate technical, schedule and supply chain risks early.
• Manage design and delivery risks proactively; tolerate ambiguity while driving clarity.
• Ensure quality and reliability standards are met; own test and validation strategy.
• Make pragmatic decisions when data is incomplete or timelines are tight.

• Delivered a product or product increment on time, to specification, within cost and quality targets.
• Established clear ownership of the roadmap and demonstrated responsiveness to customer/market feedback.
• Built a capable, engaged team with clear accountability and technical capability.
• Navigated supply chain complexity and cost optimisation without compromising quality.
• Made multiple trade-off decisions that balanced competing priorities (performance vs. cost, speed vs. quality, scope vs. timeline).
• Earned trust from engineering, manufacturing, senior stakeholders and customer teams through pragmatic, honest delivery.

Key skills, experience and behaviours

• Experience delivering hardware products from concept to production, with experience managing end-to-end product lifecycle.
• Track record of leading cross-functional teams through complex, multi-disciplinary delivery.
• Proven ability to prioritise, make trade-off decisions, and execute in resource-constrained or ambiguous environments.
• Strong understanding of supply chain, manufacturing, cost management and production logistics.
• Experience defining product requirements, managing roadmaps and translating customer needs into delivery.

• Software product development or supporting software-hardware integration.
• RF, electronics or communications domain knowledge.
• Defence, aerospace or mission-critical systems background (familiar with compliance and demanding customers).
• Familiarity with agile delivery, rapid prototyping and iterative development.

• You do not need to be an RF engineer or electronics expert, but you need to understand technical tradeoffs and be able to speak credibly with engineers about design decisions.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and incomplete information; able to drive decisions forward despite uncertainty.
• Pragmatic problem-solver who prioritises getting to a working solution over perfect planning.

• You care about solving real customer and end-user problems and can translate those needs into product direction.
• You are comfortable making decisions, setting priorities and being accountable for outcomes.
• You can balance user needs, technical constraints and commercial considerations when making trade-offs.
• You are willing to get stuck in, support your team directly, and push delivery forward yourself.
• You communicate clearly, build trust quickly and work effectively across engineering, delivery and commercial teams.
• You thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and are comfortable creating clarity where it doesn't yet exist. 

Working at Rowden