Director, Product Development - Enhanced Water & Connected Devices

The Position

The Director, Product Development - Enhanced Water & Connected Devices is a senior product and platform leadership role at the intersection of product strategy, software, firmware, cloud infrastructure, IoT data, connected-device experiences, and cross-functional execution. Twist is the immediate priority, including the installed fleet and the next generations of countertop and freestanding products. The longer-term mandate is to establish repeatable connected-product practices that can support Purity, ice machines, and future connected products.

This role is the business owner for the connected-product layer. The Director defines the problems to solve, why they matter, the outcomes required, and how work should be prioritized. Product Development & Engineering and technical partners retain technical design and implementation authority within their disciplines. Success requires aligning these groups through clear requirements, governance, decisions, and measurable outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

1. Twist Product Strategy and Roadmap

• Own the Twist unit product-family vision, product strategy, and long-range roadmap across current and future generations.

• Define and prioritize feature sets, software and user-experience requirements, market opportunities, business cases, pilots, release sequencing, and lifecycle decisions.

• Provide product requirements and functional specifications that inform hardware, electronics, firmware, cloud, and system-development decisions.

• Partner with Enhanced Water Operations leader and Sales, Marketing, Service, Operations, and Finance on launch readiness, channel needs, pricing and packaging inputs, enablement, and performance measurement.

• Use customer, market, fleet, service, and competitive evidence to make roadmap decisions and communicate tradeoffs to leadership.

2. Firmware, Cloud, and Connected-Platform Ownership

• Own business and product requirements for firmware across supported Twist generations and for the cloud capabilities that enable connected experiences.

• Lead governance of the DTI-to-Novus transition and establish effective day-to-day ways of working with Novus and the Culligan Center of Excellence.

• Coordinate support plans for parallel Twist 2.0 and 3.0 firmware and software environments, including prioritization, sprint alignment, testing, acceptance, release sequencing, deployment, and sustaining.

• Own product-level prioritization of defects, remote diagnostics, alerts and notifications, APIs, on-device UX and accessibility, fleet-management capabilities, and enterprise integrations.

• Establish visibility into roadmaps, capacity, dependencies, risks, and release impacts across Culligan Quench, the Center of Excellence, and partner teams.

• Partner with Engineering and security and data stakeholders on architecture implications, security requirements, data governance, and technical tradeoffs.

3. IoT Data and Connected-Service Experiences

• Define the IoT data-product roadmap and the machine, fleet, customer, commercial, and service insights required to improve business performance.

• Own requirements for fleet-health reporting, operator-facing analytics, customer-facing connected experiences, portals, enterprise data sharing, and performance dashboards.

• Use dispense patterns, field-failure data, product usage, and operational feedback to inform priorities and measurable success criteria.

• Define requirements for proactive service triggers and predictive-maintenance use cases in partnership with Service, Care, IT, Operations, and Analytics.

• Ensure connected-product initiatives include adoption plans, business cases, workflow implications, training requirements, and post-launch measurement.

4. Governance, Partner Leadership, and Ways of Working

• Establish a common operating cadence across Product, Engineering, the Center of Excellence, Novus, Service, Operations, Commercial, and other partners.

• Create clear decision rights, requirements-review practices, roadmap governance, sprint and release touchpoints, risk escalation, and executive reporting.

• Align delivery priorities with available capacity and enterprise priorities, and build evidence-based business cases when initiatives require broader organizational change or investment.

• Serve as a senior escalation point for connected-product requirements, partner performance, release risks, and cross-functional tradeoffs.

• Build trusted relationships across Culligan Quench, Culligan, and external partners while maintaining accountability for outcomes.

5. Future Capability and Team Leadership

• Define the future-state connected-product operating model for 2028 and beyond, including what Culligan Quench should own directly and what should remain with the Center of Excellence or external partners.

• Develop the capability roadmap for dedicated firmware, cloud, data, quality assurance and testing, UX, and technical-product resources as scale and business cases justify investment.

• Help recruit, onboard, coach, and lead future team members and establish career paths and standards for connected-product work.

• Extend common connected-device practices across Twist, Purity, ice machines, and future products without creating category-specific silos.

• Promote reusable capabilities, including telemetry standards, diagnostics, alerts, integration patterns, release governance, field-feedback loops, and lifecycle discipline.

Success Measures

• Predictable firmware, cloud, and connected-product delivery against an agreed roadmap.

• Stable support and disciplined release management across multiple product and firmware generations.

• Improved transparency, prioritization, and accountability across Novus, the Center of Excellence, Engineering, and business teams.

• Roadmap initiatives supported by clear business cases, defined KPIs, and post-launch measurement.

• Connected-device capabilities that improve customer experience, service effectiveness, product reliability, adoption, or recurring-revenue performance.

• A credible multi-year capability and talent plan for scaling connected products across the portfolio.

Experience and Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressively responsible product-management, platform, software, IoT, or connected-device experience, including leadership at the director or senior-director level.

• Demonstrated ownership across the product lifecycle, from customer discovery and business cases through requirements, delivery, launch, measurement, sustaining, and lifecycle decisions.

• Experience working across software, firmware, cloud, connected hardware, data products, UX, APIs, fleet management, or operational platforms.

• Ability to translate business and customer needs into clear product requirements, priorities, acceptance criteria, and measurable outcomes.

• Experience leading external development partners, shared technical organizations, or complex matrixed delivery models.

• Strong executive communication, structured problem-solving, stakeholder leadership, and comfort operating through ambiguity.

• Demonstrated ability to build teams, operating models, governance practices, or organizational capabilities over time.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience; advanced degree is helpful but not required.

Leadership Attributes

• Business ownership with technical credibility

• Bias for evidence, clarity, and measurable outcomes

• Collaborative leadership without loss of accountability

• Comfort influencing across organizational boundaries

• Pragmatism in balancing ambition, capacity, and enterprise priorities

• Commitment to customer experience, product quality, and scalable operations