IT Senior Product Manager I

About Kirkland & Ellis

Kirkland & Ellis LLP is a preeminent, full-service law firm with offices around the world and a staff as diverse as the practice areas we support. Our clients range from Fortune 100 companies to medium and small corporations, financial institutions, and private equity firms.  Known for our commitment to excellence, Kirkland strives to provide superior service to our clients as well as our fellow employees. From Information Technology to Human Resources, Paralegal Services to Business Development, Kirkland offers non-attorney professionals challenging careers in a variety of functional areas. Whether starting or growing your career, Kirkland can offer a performance-driven culture filled with bright and innovative teams of co-workers.

Essential Job Functions

The IT Senior Product Manager I will manage production application problems to resolution on a client facing, custom-built application, approaching multiple types of end users with empathy, while maintaining a balance between the business and individual user need. The position requires a product management professional with a well-honed problem management process that helps them to assess, generate, test and provide workarounds to users while ensuring the overall problem has been effectively documented for the application build teams to resolve. Ingenuity coupled with the ability and desire to gain strong product knowledge are essential for success in this role. This role requires managing problems through their lifecycle including release planning and validation across multiple environments. A flexible schedule will be needed at times to ensure critical incidents are resolved with both urgency and quality.

The IT Senior Product Manager I will work hand in hand to build relationships with their own team and the various teams, including but not limited to Security Governance, Risk and Business Development. The role entails working closely with mid to senior level management, attorneys, application development teams, and product users, to elicit, document, and translate specifications on applications for the departments, Firm, and the Firm’s clients.  The successful candidate must be results driven and have experience working with stakeholders who demand high quality and quick turnaround. This individual will evaluate and translate production end user problems and request specifications into functional and technical requirements, utilizing the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and Agile methodologies, working between the Custom Application Development and Packaged Solutions teams. This position will allow a person to further hone and maintain technology skills, operating primarily as a business/practice IT driver in the private fund formation space. Thus, the applicant must possess highly developed skills, including but not limited to, advanced verbal and written communication, active listening, business analysis and technical writing.  This individual must have experience working with developers, architects and external vendors. The IT Senior Product Manager I must have a bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 5 years’ experience applying business systems analysis and business process management principles at different levels of an organization within an iterative and phased approach driven information technology environment.

Essential Functions: (This list is not exhaustive and may be supplemented and changed as necessary.)

• Experience with planning and leading the implementation and/or development of technical and non-technical products and upgrades. 
• The IT Product Manager must possess high-level analytical and organizational skills and the ability to analyze complex information structures involving multiple layers of data and workflows.
• 8+ years’ experience in project delivery disciplines and activities (i.e., product management, business analysis and project management activities); including delivery adhering to Agile methodologies and the SDLC, solid knowledge of professional services or legal practice, marketing, recruiting, and financial processes preferably within the professional services industry.
• Ability to make effective decisions and tradeoffs between resolution, schedule, and costs based on their relationship to business goals, Firm policies, software architecture constraints, and software development team capabilities or capacity.
• Proven track record of identifying and implementing process improvements and technical solutions as an outcome of their own analysis and associated work product, with minimal supervision.
• Exhibits leadership skills in a dynamic environment to lead by example, mentor, motivate and manage team members through challenging efforts.
• Ability to work independently and self-manage tasks and time to balance and adapt to changing priorities.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills; proficiency in adapting communication language and style to varied audiences making use of Microsoft PowerPoint, Visio, and other Firm tools.
• Works to understand, simplify and improve the user experience in meeting business objectives in all endeavors.
• Adheres to Firm and department policies, procedures, approved artifacts, methodologies, and delivery approaches to ensure that project efforts are focused on the proper solution and level of functionality needed to meet the objectives of Firmwide, practice group, and functional department customers, without supervision.
• Provides project-driven business analysis: functional requirement gathering based on trends and themes identified in production incidents.
• Generates test plans from functional requirements and may execute part or all of test plan prior to QA testers doing so to ensure effectiveness.
• Evaluates test results, effectively identifies and tracks issues using Firm-approved tools and processes working with respective team to escalate for resolution.
• Escalates issues to management, as appropriate, when client expectations and functionality do not match and cannot be reconciled without additional time, cost or resources.
• Ability to apply project management methodology to product delivery efforts independent of assigned Project Manager.
• Under direction of the lead Sr Product Manager, may provide enterprise business analysis/requirements gathering to proactively seek out business needs across practices, functional departments, and/or technical solutions.
• Acts as relationship manager in the process of seeking out, identifying, and resolving business needs and/or business problems through process and/or technical recommendations and/or technical solutions across practice groups, units as assigned.

Other Functions:

• Any other functions/duties as assigned by management.

Qualifications & Requirements

• 5+ years IT experience with a background in business analysis, product management and/or process design.
• Bachelor degree.
• Experience in Agile Methodology and SDLC.
• Experience with workflow and project management software.

Preferred

• Legal or private fund formation knowledge and understanding.
• Experience in Change or Release Management.

Technologies/Software

• Microsoft Office Suite
• Visio
• Microsoft Azure DevOps/VSTS/TFS
• JIRA
• Test Manager

Preferred Technologies

• Dynatrace
• K2
• Qlik
• Ivanti for ITSM

Certificates, Licensures, Registrations

• List any certifications, licenses, registrations, etc. and specify whether they are required or preferred. Delete if not applicable.

Tools and Equipment

• Please list any/all tools and equipment the position will require the usage of, if they have not already been listed. Standard equipment like phones, computers, etc., do not necessarily need to be listed. Delete if not applicable.

Work Environment

• This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, and filing cabinets.

How to Apply

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Equal Employment Opportunity

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