Forward Deployed Product Manager (FDPM)
Job Description
LotusFlare is a provider of cloud-native SaaS products based in the heart of Silicon Valley. Founded by the team that helped Facebook reach over one billion users, LotusFlare was established to make affordable mobile communications available to everyone on Earth. Today, LotusFlare focuses on designing, building, and continuously evolving a digital commerce and monetization platform that delivers valuable outcomes for enterprise customers. Our flagship platform, Digital Network Operator® (DNO™) Cloud, is licensed to leading tier-1 telecommunications service providers globally and supports millions of active subscribers across diverse international markets.
Position Summary:
The Forward Deployed Product Manager (FDPM) at LotusFlare is a high-impact role positioning elite professionals directly at the intersection of external clients, strategic business objectives, and internal platform engineering teams. This is a deeply technical and strategic role designed specifically for dynamic execution leaders who reject the traditional "meeting scheduler" or "status tracker" interpretation of project management.
The FDPM operates as an entrepreneurial, technical product manager embedded directly within a client's environment.
You are a unique blend of technical product manager, data strategist, solution architect, and execution engine. You are completely accountable for uncovering our client's most painful operational bottlenecks, defining robust platform solutions, writing granular technical requirements, protecting delivery margins (P&L), and driving unprecedented deployment velocity. Your mission is to transform raw enterprise complexity into highly polished production systems with relentless software rigor, making LotusFlare software absolutely indispensable to our clients' core business operations.
Three Core Pillars:
1. Strategic Discovery & Value Mapping (Uncover the "Why"):
Embed deeply within the client's operations and leadership structures to identify hidden system gaps, discover high-value business problems, and map precisely where LotusFlare software can drive the largest economic and operational impact.
2.Technical Analysis & Data Scoping (Own the "What"):
Operates as a Technical Analyst and 'Solution Architect Light'. Commands technical alignment workshops with client technical architects and internal development crews. Drives alignment around API contracts, service schemas, system boundaries, and low-level data flows without needing to write production code blocks.
3.High-Velocity Project Execution (Drive the "How"):
Acts as the primary operational anchor for absolute scope delivery. Orchestrates cross-functional tracks (Engineering, UX/UI, QA, and CareOps), surfaces hidden risks, and establishes modern working structures to enable rapid software iterations directly with end users.
Core Responsibilities:
1. Embedded Client Strategy & Scoping
Embed proactively within the client team, technical ‘infrastructure’, and business operations to deeply understand and document their real-world workflows, integration realities, and system pain points.
Translate chaotic, unstructured business demands and technical constraints into clean, high-impact platform solutions that align seamlessly with LotusFlare DNO Cloud product catalog, charging models, and orchestration patterns.
Act as the primary interface and trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders and product owners, preparing high-quality milestone presentations and managing complex enterprise relationships.
Enforce a strict, gated 'Requirements Locked' blueprinting process and execute systematic scope-change reset rules to protect the project P&L and ensure predictable, highly focused delivery timelines.
2. Solution Architecture & Technical Alignment
Lead technical alignment workshops, partnering closely with internal Forward Deployed Engineers and client architects to map backend systems, define REST APIs, outline JSON schemas, and structure data flows.
Author comprehensive, high-quality Technical Requirements Documents (TRD) and Product Requirements Documents (PRD) that ensure clear technical boundaries and eliminate delivery ambiguity.
Establish a tight loop back to the Core Product team; distill custom field-deployment constraints, required workarounds, and field insights into rigorous 1-page feature theses that permanently improve our core SaaS platform productized catalog.
Pioneer an AI-native operational model across the delivery organization, utilizing cutting-edge LLMs and advanced prompting environments (e.g., Cursor, Claude, Copilot) to generate granular user stories, complex system mappings, and accelerate requirements auditing.
3. Agile Execution & Rapid Iteration
Drive high-velocity tactical sprint execution, backlog refinement, and core agile planning ceremonies to keep the delivery engine moving seamlessly from raw ideation into active production code.
Run highly interactive, iterative feedback sessions directly with client end-users—demonstrating intermediate builds, gathering unvarnished feedback, and guiding clients to adopt innovative workflows they didn't think were possible.
Deconstruct high-level project milestones into detailed, fully groomed Jira/Asana tasks with comprehensive context descriptions, clear story point assignments, explicit dependencies, and rigorous acceptance criteria.
Proactively surface cross-team technical dependencies, proxy blocks, environment bottlenecks, and resource constraints, executing immediate collaborative resolution strategies to keep projects unblocked.
4. QA, Production Handover, & Incident Leadership
Collaborate closely with internal QA teams and client testing leads to drive end-to-end user acceptance testing (UAT), ensuring platform features meet strict, absolute Definition of Done (DoD) metrics.
Engage client operations and customer support functions (CareOps) early in the delivery lifecycle, co-authoring production runbooks, monitoring architectures, and knowledge frameworks to execute a flawless handoff.
Act as the lead coordinator and tactical responder during high-priority production incidents, performing immediate triage, managing cross-company resolution command tracks, and conducting Root Cause Analysis (RCA) mappings to pave long-term platform stabilization paths.
Job Requirements
Experience: 5+ years of software implementation experience operating as a Technical Product Manager, Forward Deployed Engineer/Architect, Management/Technical Consultant, or Senior Technical Project Manager handling large-scale, complex enterprise systems integrations.
Technical Acumen: Strong foundational fluency in cloud-native microservices architectures, REST APIs, JSON schemas, containerized environments (Docker/Kubernetes), and database technologies. Must possess the technical competence to lead complex data and architectural design sessions confidently without needing to write production code.
Telecom Domain Expertise: Robust knowledge of telecom frameworks (BSS/OSS architecture) with hands-on experience executing massive digital transformation programs across customer management, digital commerce, billing, activation, or network orchestration.
Thriving in Ambiguity: An intense, entrepreneurial ownership mindset with a proven ability to operate with extreme autonomy in flat, fast-paced corporate environments. Comfortable making highly confident decisions under deeply uncertain, rapidly shifting conditions.
Consultative Communication: Exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Elite capability to ask deep, analytical, first-principles questions (management consulting style), challenge legacy system constraints gracefully, and instantly structure chaotic business challenges under pressure.
AI Tool Integration: Demonstrated competency or high enthusiasm for integrating Generative AI developer environments and tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude, Copilot, Gemini) into daily professional workflows to automate documentation, analyze complex data sets, and massively scale individual output.
Global Mobility & Rigor: Exceptional diligence with the flexibility to collaborate effectively across highly distributed international time zones (North America, Europe, and Asia hubs), and a willingness to travel to client deployment sites to embed directly with operations when critical milestones dictate.
Benefits we have for you:
- Yearly bonus
- Paid lunches
- MultiSport card
- Private medical insurance
- Reimbursement of accountant assistance expenses
- ZUS coverage
- Paid sick leaves
- 21 working days of vacation, public holidays
- Training and workshops
About us:
At LotusFlare, we attract and keep amazing people by offering two key things:
Purposeful Work: Every team member sees how their efforts make a tangible, positive difference for our customers and partners.
Growth Opportunities: We provide the chance to develop professionally while mastering cutting-edge practices in cloud-native enterprise software.
From the beginning, our mission has been to simplify technology to create better experiences for customers. Using an “experience down” approach, which prioritizes the customer's journey at every stage of development, our Digital Network Operator™ Cloud empowers communication service providers to achieve valuable business outcomes. DNO Cloud enables communication service providers to innovate freely, reduce operational costs, monetize network assets, engage customers on all digital channels, drive customer acquisition, and increase retention.
With headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and five major offices worldwide, LotusFlare serves Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, A1, Globe Telecom, Liberty Latin America, Singtel, and other leading enterprises around the world.
Website: www.lotusflare.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lotusflare
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeatlotusflare/