Director of Product Management, Tekion
$162-269.5k
Offers stock options
More information about location
End-to-end cloud native automotive platform
Job no longer available
End-to-end cloud native automotive platform
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$162-269.5k
Offers stock options
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
To build the world's best business applications in the cloud.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years in product leadership roles, with demonstrated ownership of strategic product roadmaps and delivery against OKRs
- Leadership experience in automotive digital retail/eCommerce, including end-to-end online vehicle purchase flows
- Proven ability to manage enterprise OEM relationships, including digital program governance, requirements alignment, approvals, and rollout execution
- Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills; comfortable leading cross-functionally and through influence
- Working knowledge of compliance considerations (consumer protection, consent/communications, and OEM brand standards)
What the job involves
- The Director of Business Product for AEC (Automotive Enterprise Cloud) — Lead AEC Platform Strategy, expansion opportunities, and e-commerce by owning strategic OEM and partner relationships and driving program execution support that accelerates the digital transformation of the vehicle retail experience
- Ensure platform and e-commerce capabilities align with OEM brand standards, governance, compliance, and program priorities, enabling dealers to deliver a frictionless omnichannel buying journey across online and in-store touchpoints
- Serve as the primary liaison between AEC product teams and OEM stakeholders
- Enable and support OEM governance cadences (QBRs, roadmap reviews, release readiness, escalation paths) to ensure alignment, transparency, and timely decision-making
- Help define, operationalize, and sustain OEM roadmap requests, including criteria, validation processes, and measurement
- Lead structured requirements gathering from OEMs and translate inputs into clear product artifacts (PRDs/BRDs, epics, user stories, acceptance criteria) with the assistance of Inbound Product Teams
- Prioritize the AEC digital retail roadmap in partnership with Product and Engineering by balancing OEM priorities, dealer outcomes, platform scalability, technical dependencies, and resourcing
- Manage OEM-driven roadmap commitments across multiple brands/programs, ensuring the platform remains configurable and scalable (minimizing one-off customizations)
- Partner with Product Management Teams, Engagement Directors, Design, Engineering, Data, Security/Compliance, Implementation, and Support to deliver OEM-aligned features from discovery through launch
- Drive end-to-end execution for OEM initiatives: scope definition, timelines, dependencies, risk management, release readiness, enablement, and post-launch measurement
- Ensure compliance with OEM rules, consumer protection laws, accessibility requirements, and automotive ecommerce regulations
- Coordinate with internal GTM teams to align launches, enablement, and communications to OEM program timelines and dealer adoption needs
- Support packaging guidance and commercialization inputs where OEM program structures influence how products are deployed across dealer networks
- Ensure AEC supports seamless omnichannel transactions and communications (desktop, mobile, showroom, chat, voice, text, email, social), aligned to OEM experience standards
- Create an AEC AI strategy by partnering with AI Product and Engineering teams
- Maintain awareness of competitive digital retail platforms and evolving OEM digital programs to inform OEM conversations and roadmap tradeoffs
- Track trends in digital showroom experiences, financing innovation, and AI-driven purchase recommendations, translating implications into OEM-facing recommendations
- Provide periodic readouts to internal leadership on OEM needs, market shifts, and competitive positioning
- Partner with Product Marketing to create OEM-specific positioning inputs, value narratives, and battlecard guidance for field teams
- Deliver crisp executive communications: program updates, roadmap narratives, escalation summaries, and success metrics to both OEM and internal leadership
- Define strategies (with Product) that bridge online and offline experiences, ensuring smooth hand-offs between digital touchpoints, dealership operations, and aftersales/service—within OEM guidelines
- Advocate for customer-first innovation while balancing OEM governance, dealer operational realities, and platform consistency
Our take
Car dealerships suffer from an inefficiency problem. The paperwork and administration required to complete a sale requires dealers to manage a disjointed set of various software applications. Tekion is offering an enticing remedy - a cloud-based automotive retail system that integrates the various software applications in a single infrastructure.
Competition has been strong, with rivals CDK Global and Reynolds & Reynolds offering a competitive raft of features, and benefiting from strong prior relationships with dealerships. Tekion, however, has nevertheless secured customers for the software in 28 states - likely in part due to the efficiency of partnering with a single growing service as opposed to a disparate spread.
This momentum shows no signs of slowing either, as Tekion has attracted attention from major players like CMC, Chrysler, and Chevrolet. By streamlining dealership operations into a single platform, the company is proving that even in a crowded market, innovation and simplicity can win over both dealers and industry partners.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
25% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Jul 2024
$200m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Oct 2021
$250m
SERIES D
Total funding: $635.1m
Company benefits
- Silicon Valley Startup Environment
- Stock Options
- Focus on Work/Life Balance
- Recognition Culture
- Health and Wellness
- Unparalleled Career Development
Company HQ
Pleasanton, CA
Leadership
Jay Vijayan
(Co-Founder & CEO)They started their career at Oracle, where they spent over 7 years in Management before spending 4 at VMware. They then worked at Tesla for 4 years, leaving their position as CIO to found Tekion in February 2016.
Guru Sankararaman
(Co-Founder & COO)After working as a Chief Architect at Cisco, they joined Tesla for 4 years. Initially they served as Director of Information Technology and then later became VP of Information Technology. Left this role to co-found Tekion in 2016.
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