Library Software Product Manager at CERN spin-off

About TIND

TIND develops next-generation library software that enables academic libraries and global institutions to reimagine the way they acquire, archive, manage and share information. Our customers include Berkeley, Caltech, Columbia and the United Nations.

Born out of CERN in 2013, TIND is now a growing scale-up with offices in Norway and California. TIND offers a collaborative, dynamic, and creative work environment with unlimited opportunity to learn and grow your career.

More info about our products and customers is available at www.tind.io

Overall Job Description

As TIND’s product manager, you will be responsible for creating quality products and driving a first-class user experience on TIND products. You will lead the development team to deliver on the product vision and roadmap. You will own the day-to-day management of the development team in a scrum process, as well as the continuous planning of new feature developments.

You will also play a central part in choosing which development projects to focus on and partake in defining the strategic direction of our products.

High-level/Strategic Responsibilities

You will work with company stakeholders and our strategic customers to define and prioritize new developments to be included in the future product roadmap.

You will be responsible for executing the product vision into tangible features: this means breaking down the high-level vision of a feature into user stories, detailed specifications, mockups and wireframes. These requirements will typically form the foundation for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that will be broken down into development sprints and planned for deployment in a future software release.

Day-to-day Responsibilities

In day-to-day operations, you will function as the Product Owner, planning, running, and evaluating development sprints. This includes managing regular sprint planning and review meetings, as well as overall quality assurance (QA). Between sprints, you will be responsible for continuously organizing and (re)prioritizing the sprint backlog.

Other Responsibilities

The planned developments part of TIND’s product roadmap need to be organized and communicated in a release plan and public roadmap available to customers. As the product manager, you will deliver on the set release plan and product roadmap, continuously adjusting the plan, as well as communicating any updates and changes internally as well as to our customers. You will maintain a customer-facing product roadmap.

You will be responsible for internal and external communications around new releases, writing clear customer-facing documentation of new features and detailed release notes. You will also regularly report on development progress to management.

Ideal Requirements

• Good understanding of academic libraries and library software requirements. For example, experience in working with library systems administration or library software development*
• Minimum 4 years of experience within product management*
• Ability to create wireframes and UI mockups*
• Good understanding of scrum
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong planning, project management and reporting skills
• Tech-savvy (e.g. can read basic code)

*In order to apply, you should at the minimum meet one of the top core requirements. We realize that we are looking for several special requirements and hope that you will apply although you may not meet all of the above points. Likely, no one is going to meet all of our ideal requirements! If you are a seasoned product manager without any library (system) experience, then demonstrate that you are passionate about understanding how libraries and library systems work. Vice versa, if you are a skillful systems librarian without any product manager experience, convince us that you are eager and quickly able to acquire the missing skillset.

Who You Are

• Excellent at understanding customer needs and able to translate these into a product vision
• Excellent at seeing the ‘big picture’ while also able the keep and eye on important details
• A team player: willing to flex in small and dynamic team environment
• A strong leader: ability to motivate and build a team
• Broad understanding of library technology and library software
• Able to contribute your experiences and best practices within product development and improve TIND’s workflows and approach to product development
• Able to make tough prioritization decisions to deliver new and improved features on time
• Good understanding of UX and an eye for design
• Tech-savvy: ability to (help) define technical architecture/solutions
• ‘Outside the square’ thinker with good problem-solving skills
• Excellent at communication and setting expectations: both with customers and internal stakeholders
• Data and evidence driven

Education

Ideally, you have one of the following:

• Higher education degree in Library Science
• Higher education degree in Computer Science

Location

Our development team is located in Norway and remotely in Europe, all in the CET time zone. We are ideally looking for candidates that are willing to relocate to Oslo, Norway. However, this is not a mandatory requirement. We already have several people in our team that are working remotely. That said, the development team works quite closely together (daily stand-ups and weekly planning meetings), and so it is a big benefit to be located in a time zone with some overlap to the EU developers. So if you are based in California, get ready to rise early!

Working Language

Our working language is English, both internally and externally with customers. The team at TIND consists currently of about 50% Norwegians and the rest are American, French, Italian and British.

Diversity

We think a diverse team is a great strength that gives us a competitive advantage. We want our team to consist of people with different backgrounds, perspectives, competencies and life experiences. A diverse team also makes the workplace more fun and inclusive. We hope that you will apply to this position regardless of age, gender, ethnicity and life experience.