Product Management Director - Deployment Platform

Job Purpose We are seeking a Director-level Individual Contributor in Product Management to lead the strategy, development, and execution of our deployment and operational platform for Connetic, the next generation payment innovation from ACI Worldwide. This role blends product leadership, DevOps strategy, and cloud-first deployment expertise, with responsibility for enabling secure, scalable, cloud-native and hybrid deployments across on-premises, private cloud, and SaaS environments. You will define how mission-critical payment software is delivered, deployed, upgraded, and operated globally, across multi-cloud and enterprise environments, working across engineering, global markets, SRE, and customer-facing teams. This is a hands-on strategic role requiring deep technical fluency in cloud platforms, distributed systems, and deployment automation, and the ability to influence without direct authority. Essential Functions and Responsibilities Product Strategy & Portfolio Ownership Drive the product definition, roadmap, and solution plans for deployment platforms, cloud infrastructure capabilities, and operational tooling. Develop and maintain multi-year (3–5 year) product strategy and annual operating plans for DevOps, cloud deployment, and platform capabilities. Define business cases and investment priorities based on market analysis, cloud adoption trends, and customer needs across SaaS and self-managed environments. DevOps, Cloud & Platform Own product vision for DevOps and cloud-enabled deployment tooling, including: Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and GitOps models CI/CD pipelines and release orchestration across environments Environment provisioning across multi-cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) and on-prem Configuration management and secrets management Observability (logging, metrics, tracing, alerting) Define standards for cloud-native architectures, including containerization (Kubernetes), service mesh, and microservices deployment patterns. Establish automation frameworks to enable consistent, repeatable deployments across SaaS, hybrid, and on-prem environments. Drive improvements in deployment velocity, reliability, cost efficiency, and operational resilience. On-Prem, SaaS & Cloud Deployment Strateg y Define and deliver deployment models supporting: Cloud-native SaaS platforms (multi-tenant and single-tenant) Hybrid and multi-cloud deployments Private cloud and on-premise (including air-gapped environments) Design for portability across cloud providers and customer-managed infrastructure. Own versioning, upgrade strategies, patching, blue/green and canary releases, and backward compatibility across environments. Ensure architectures support: High availability and fault tolerance Disaster recovery and geo-redundancy Elastic scalability and workload isolation in cloud environments Ensure deployment and cloud architecture supports high-performance payment processing, including: Wires, real-time payments, cards, and ACH Low latency and high throughput requirements Regulatory requirements (PCI-DSS, regional compliance, data residency) End-to-end encryption and secure key management Partner with professional services, solution consulting, application, and payment product teams to ensure seamless delivery across all deployment models. Customer & Market Engagement Engage directly with enterprise customers, partners, and implementation teams to understand deployment, cloud adoption, and operational challenges. Translate customer feedback, cloud migration needs, and market trends into actionable product capabilities. Partner with Sales and Marketing on go-to-market strategy, including positioning cloud vs on-prem offerings, sales enablement, and customer adoption strategies. Cross-Functional Leadership Collaborate with: Engineering (platform, cloud infrastructure, and application teams) Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Security, Compliance, and Risk Professional Services / Implementation Influence architecture decisions to ensure deployability, operability, scalability, and cloud readiness are core design principles. Act as a key bridge between platform engineering and customer-facing delivery teams. Operational & Financial Accountability Define and track key KPIs: Deployment success rate Release frequency and cycle time Environment provisioning time Cloud infrastructure utilization and efficiency Drive continuous improvement through automation, telemetry, and data-driven insights. Contribute to cost optimization strategies, particularly in cloud infrastructure and SaaS operations. Perform other duties as assigned Qualifications (Education, Experience, Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities) Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience. 8+ years of experience in Product Management, DevOps, Platform Engineering, or related roles. Proven experience managing enterprise software deployments across SaaS, cloud, and on-prem environments. Strong knowledge of: Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) DevOps practices and tools (CI/CD, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, etc.) Distributed systems and microservices architectures Experience with cloud-native and hybrid deployment models . Competencies Deep systems thinker with strong cloud, platform, and architectural expertise Customer-first mindset with strong empathy for enterprise deployment and cloud migration challenges Strong analytical and business case development skills Ability to influence without authority and operate at executive level High ownership with a bias toward execution, scalability, and measurable outcomes Preferred Qualifications (Education, Experience, Competencies) Experience in payments, fintech, or regulated industries. Familiarity with: PCI-DSS, SOC2, and compliance-driven product development Data residency and sovereign cloud considerations Experience driving cloud transformation or SaaS platform adoption. Proven ability to influence large, cross-functional organizations as a senior IC. Work Environment: Hybrid work environment Majority of time spent on PC (Phys. Req.) Travel as needed for customer and stakeholder engagement