Forterra · 15 hours ago
Senior Technical Product Manager
Clarksburg, MD
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level
$145K/yr - $165K/yr
5+ years expForterra is a leading provider of autonomous systems for ground-based movement in the working world. The Technical Product Manager will partner with engineers to drive delivery of mission-critical capabilities for operators and warfighters, ensuring product alignment with user needs and technical constraints.
Defense & Space
Responsibilities
Own the Roadmap for Your Product Area: Define the customer need, value proposition, and success metrics for your product area. Make sure the work being done is the best way to deliver that value
Drive Alignment: Create user journeys, diagrams, and other artifacts to clarify priorities and align stakeholders internal and external to your team
Shape Execution: Translate ambiguous goals into clear, prioritized work. Write detailed feature descriptions and acceptance criteria that enable execution
Prioritize Ruthlessly: Intake and triage product improvements. Balance customer impact, technical effort, and business needs in prioritizing your backlog
Communicate Proactively: Keep engineering, product leadership, growth, and other stakeholders informed. Share progress, flag issues, and raise tradeoffs early
Measure Progress and Value: Define KPIs, evaluate work against roadmap goals, and ensure your team is maximizing impact
Validate Delivery: Work closely with engineering to ensure that what is being built meets the intended scope and quality. Accept completed work based on clear criteria
Support Agile Rhythm: Supporting as a Product Owner when needed, partnering with Scrum Masters to shape sprint goals and contribute to sprint reviews
Escalate When Needed: Raise scope or timeline risks to Product Leadership to support decision-making. Champion Your Team: Evangelize successes and ensure the value your team delivers is visible across the organization
Qualification
Required
5–8+ years of technical product management experience, ideally on defense products
You're comfortable operating at both strategic and tactical levels—able to align with business goals and get specific with technical teams
Strong product instincts—able to connect field needs and platform constraints to tactical engineering priorities
Experience building complex hardware products that directly support high-performance, high-confidence software
You're technical enough to earn the trust of engineers, hold your own in brainstorming sessions, and ensure feasibility
Deep familiarity with product development in systems with high performance, safety, and robustness requirements
You communicate clearly across roles—from engineers to executives—and thrive in cross-functional environments
You are rigorous about execution and care deeply that what is being built works for the user in the real world
Up to 25% travel may be required to support field testing, customer deployments, and in-person workshops. Preference for hybrid candidates near Forterra's core offices: Clarksburg, MD; or Arlington, VA
Preferred
Military background and/or Product Management experience with defense products
Background in autonomy, robotics, or hardware engineering
Experience in fast-paced or startup environments, especially building 0-to-1 products
Familiarity with Agile environments and tools like Jira
Benefits
Premium Healthcare Benefits: Three plan options, including an HSA-eligible plan, with Forterra covering 80% of the plan premium for you and your dependents.
Basic Life/AD&D, short and long-term disability insurance plans 100% covered by Forterra, plus the option to purchase additional life insurance for you and your dependents.
Extremely generous company holiday calendar including a winter break in December.
Competitive paid time off (PTO) offering 20 days accrued per year.
A minimum of 7 weeks fully paid parental leave for birth/adoption.
$9k annual tuition reimbursement or professional development stipend.
Fully stocked beverage refrigerators with all the Celsius your little heart desires.
401(k) retirement savings plan, including traditional, Roth 401(k), and after-tax deferral with company match up to 4%.
Company
Forterra
Forterra delivers autonomous mission systems for defense.
201-500 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageRecent News
2025-11-14
2025-11-14
Washington Technology
2025-11-14
Company data provided by crunchbase