Senior Director of Product

Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company that tackles cities' greatest challenges. We create products and solutions, invest in new companies, and help developers build more sustainable, innovative, and equitable places around the world. Our ambitious vision requires us to push ourselves beyond conventional thinking, and we work hard in pursuit of our mission. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

Our urban innovations include Delve (a generative design product that empowers real estate teams to design better, faster, with less risk), Mesa (an easy-install kit for commercial buildings that cuts energy costs, improves tenant comfort, and simplifies building operations), Pebble (a low-cost vehicle sensor to help manage parking and curb space), and Affordable Electrification (a new way to manage home energy use to meet a customer’s monthly budget). We're also developing an offsite construction company that can deliver high-quality mass timber buildings for more sustainable living and working.

With the potential to radically improve quality of life in cities for all, our work is both exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

To date, we've incubated and invested in multiple companies focused on solving urban problems.

We now seek to create an offsite construction company delivering high-quality mass timber buildings for more sustainable living and working. The company's end-to-end approach will combine craft design and advanced manufacturing to produce customizable buildings with speed and certainty. It will be based in the Pacific Northwest. We have a unique opportunity to transform the way our urban environment is built, and build a successful venture in doing so. This company’s efforts will include:

• Designing, building, and operating a world-class advanced manufacturing facility and supply chain to produce panelized mass timber building components (floor cassettes, structural members, facade panels, and walls).
• Working with developers and architects to create high performance, market ready buildings that are optimized for production in our factory.
• Using advanced model-based digital manufacturing techniques to simulate and validate the production system design and performance, enabling us to deliver greater and earlier certainty project delivery price and schedule for our customers.
• Shipping optimally flat-packed, ready-to-assemble building parts to a customer’s development site, once the site is prepared for vertical construction.
• Investing in and scaling multiple business lines beyond the first factory, including digital design products, new material technologies, and digital factory solutions.

What is the role?

This role will own the creation of the holistic strategy of a product based approach to the design, manufacturing and construction of a Kit of Parts model for new buildings to improve cost, sustainability performance, and development timeline. This is achieved through standardized (but flexible) Kit of Parts approach fabricated through a highly-automated, production process that will produce mass timber building components and ultimately deliver a large portion of the building scope to customers.

You will continue to define the product vision, build upon our existing product team, create a cross-functional process for developing and continuous improvement of each product.

Building on top of the manufacturing platform, you will support and interface with commercial, supply chain, manufacturing, and delivery teams to ensure design requirements are understood and delivered as part of a structured product development process that you create.

Succeeding in this role requires a deep understanding of the customer- developers and contractors- as well as an understanding of existing AEC practices (design and management practices, and the practical implications of building design and construction decisions), combined with fluency in the powers and limitations of design tools, alongside a vision for the future and the ability to define and execute on a near and long-term roadmap.

Role responsibilities include:

• Lead new product development and maintain current product management through leading a cross functional approach that includes the following:
• Market research - trends, customer analysis, competitor analysis
• Product R&D - part design, integration into building designs, materials, initial costing/ unit economics
• Product design and production design - product designs and documentation, fabrication designs, manufacturing design/ constraints, sustainability performance, shipping, and assembly efficiency
• Product testing - certification, regulatory reviews, mock-ups, flexibility in building program, integrations
• Product “package”: Pricing, unit economics, value prop, marketing, specs, integration into digital solutions, warranties, IP
• Support client engagement through a “Design Assist” function- education, feasibility, design - including building and streamlining the process to achieve efficiency goals for the business
• Lead strategy for “buy-out” items including R&D, sourcing, unit economics, integrations with product, design documentation, by leveraging procurement and construction teams in addition to product team
• Maintain the product vision for the company in coordination with broader company marketing goals
• Contribute and support the development of new design engineering software tools for both product engineering and manufacturing transition
• Manage wide reaching relationships with design teams - engineers, architects, relevant manufacturers

What You Will Achieve

Your responsibilities will center on defining the 1, 5, and 10-year product strategy and delivering on it. We also look to you to integrate that product strategy into the business’ broader go-to-market strategy, profitability, and long-term growth prospects.

Hand-in-hand with strategy, you will move into execution quickly, identifying the needed resources with respect to new technology knowledge, awareness, and IP integration into the product.

After 3 months, you will have:

• Understood the kit of parts and existing assets
• Understood the manufacturing process of the kit of parts
• Developed a vision for the product based approach for the next 5 years
• Built upon and influenced a critical path schedule and plan for the next 12 months

After 6 months you will have:

• Identified a product execution strategy for our first parts to include: innovate, design, document and manage design and production of our parts
• Begun integration of software layers for key components
• Built a cross-functional approach led by your team for product development and management
• Identified resources (in-house talent or hiring needs) and external partners to execute.
• Ensured the coordination and optimization as it relates to sourcing of materials, design, software and BIM integration.

After 12 months you will:

• Have a clearly articulated 5-year strategy, building on the vision you identified and refined.

What We Expect

We believe the following is essential:

• You have a deep practical understanding of product development and management in the AEC space.
• You have a strong underlying understanding of architectural design with an ability to break it down to componentized, repeatable parts.
• You can lead a product development process from market research to R&D to unit economics to sales strategy.
• You can point to success in using product based design technology approaches to drive innovation, value, or optimization into a design/production/delivery operation.
• You are passionate about or even intimately familiar with ‘building buildings’, i.e. Architecture, Engineering, and Construction.
• You have a nuanced understanding of the problem you’re solving, e.g. through experience in the real estate or construction business, or as a client or supplier to them.
• Advanced degrees in architecture or engineering preferred.
• You have experience leading an initiative from concept to operation, working through all the stages and ambiguities along the way.
• You have significant success demonstrating the judgment, skills, and experience to build a successful strategy, and deliver on it.
• You are a motivating leader- building a hard working team, building effective relationships with your peers at the senior most level of the organization, and building trust amongst the broader AEC community.
• You are ambitious and motivated by an entrepreneurial environment and highly effective at using it as a launch pad.
• Senior enough to have knowledge, insights, relationships, and credibility—but willing to roll up your sleeves to do the work required- both for your team and flexing cross functionally where necessary.

We are very excited to hear from you.

Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We actively seek applicants from underrepresented communities. Even if you are not 100% sure you are right for the role, please apply and we will be happy to consider your application. All employment is based on merit and business need, and we respond to each application we receive.