About the job

At Grainger, we are building systems that will extend our market leadership for another 90 years. While lots of companies talk about “digital revolutions” or “delightful experiences”, we’re focusing on building the stuff that matters. Our expertise is borne of a deep understanding of our customer and their needs and how our products and services do and should create value for them. I. We are looking for exceptional product managers to help guide and chart a course for Grainger’s enterprise systems and application development so that Grainger continues to be the destination for “the ones that get it done”. The Product Manager contributes to the product strategy, vision, and roadmap of future products, with high degree of ownership over critical features and the customer experience. This role will work closely with engineering, design, and operations to develop and launch innovative aspects of a product. The Product Manager is creative and highly analytical, able to work effectively in a matrix organization, adept at synthesizing a variety of technologies and capabilities into products and applications that customers love. The Product Manager is customer focused and technology savvy – with experience creating successful products and services.

Principal Duties & Responsibilities

• Define, develop and deliver Grainger’s print publishing capabilities that allows Grainger to publish catalogs with large volumes of products and also custom catalogs with limited products geared towards an industry or a specific customer.
• Adapt to the ever-changing needs of the customer and continually innovate to produce a print experience that’s durable.
• Utilize digital capabilities to create a print publication that allows for changes in content and layout with minimal manual intervention to produce an updated print publication.
• Develop the product roadmap by defining plans to achieve the product vision and deliver business results. Assess the needs, opportunities, and pain points for the platform within Grainger’s evolving systems landscape. Contribute to a cross-functional process for prioritizing, delivering and launching major product releases and incorporating enhancement requests to existing features. Deliver in a consistent cadence of releases. Translate customer needs into product requirements.
• Communicate and coordinate launch across all stakeholders including business and engineering teams. Define, deliver (or update) readiness materials, FAQs, etc. as required to support launch.
• Track and report on planned activities for each product release.
• Facilitate and develop content for meetings up to the VP level landing the appropriate message for the audience.
• Competencies
• Demonstrated ability to design solutions to complex problems.
• Willing to design a print publishing capability form scratch and using off-the-shelf products only if they meet the needs of Grainger.
• Exceptional written, verbal, and presentation skills; excellent interpersonal skills.
• Superior process design skills and operational orientation.
• Continuous improvement and innovation mindset that results in the understanding of emerging technologies and how they might apply within the organization, as well as driving creativity, acting with agility and thinking outside current boundaries.
• Strong ability to participate in cross-functional teams and navigate a matrix organization.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills; ability to use hard data and metrics to back up assumptions and develop project business cases.
• Comfort with ambiguity.
• Thrives under pressure and working to aggressive timelines.
• The insatiable will to get stuff done.

Preferred Experience

• BS/BA degree in computer science, engineering, science, math, literature/journalism or related field. MS or MBA preferred.
• Conceptualized and built a print publishing system (Catalog and offline marketing materials). Geared towards a B2B customer preferred.
• Worked in an environment where there are multiple publications, preferred (web and print).
• Experience producing a printed catalog.
• 5-7 years of experience as a product manager or related occupation. Experience must involve: conducting strategic business and financial analysis, retrieving and analyzing large and complex data sets; Familiarity with Adobe experience suite of products is a plus. working cross-functionally with engineering, design, and project management counterparts to deliver digital products or services.
• Demonstrated expertise within industrial distribution a plus.
• A track record of successfully managing products through entire life cycle – from inception to launch.
• A track record of delivering business results and managing a product or product line P&L.
• Grainger is an Equal Opportunity Workplace and an Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status