Product Lifecycle Manager

About the Role

We’re looking for an individual contributor Product Lifecycle Manager to help SAS make disciplined, transparent, and data-informed lifecycle decisions across the product portfolio. This role partners across Product Management, Product Commercialization, R&D, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Legal, Finance, Support, and other stakeholders to ensure products are managed thoughtfully from beginning-of-life through ongoing lifecycle optimization, migration, and end-of-life, with an emphasis on executing the cross-functional programs and operations needed to support lifecycle decisions and outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Execute cross-functional programs and operations for early product lifecycle, migration, ongoing lifecycle optimization, and end-of-life motions.
• Develop data-informed lifecycle recommendations that consider customer adoption, commercial health, revenue impact, market need, product usage, support burden, technical viability, and strategic fit.
• Lead cross-functional readiness for product lifecycle decisions, including aligning stakeholders, dependencies, communications, timelines, and execution plans.
• Create executive-ready recommendations that clearly summarize lifecycle status, risks, options, tradeoffs, customer impact, proposed actions, and the operational steps required to execute approved decisions.
• Support customer-centered transition and migration planning that protects customer trust and enables SAS to shift investment toward strategic growth areas.
• Maintain transparent lifecycle reporting, dashboards, decision frameworks, and stakeholder communication practices.
• Enable product teams with playbooks, templates, best practices, metrics, and repeatable processes for various stages of the product lifecycle.
• Embrace curiosity, passion, authenticity, and accountability, which are our core values and influence everything we do.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in product management, product operations, product lifecycle management, product marketing, program management, release management, or a related software business function.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives, build alignment through influence, and drive hands-on execution and accountability across teams.
• Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative, technical, business, or analytical field such as Business Analytics, Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Finance, Statistics, or Data Science.
• Strong product judgment with the ability to balance customer needs, commercial outcomes, technical realities, and strategic priorities.
• Strong analytical capability with experience interpreting product, commercial, customer, operational, or financial data to identify trends, evaluate tradeoffs, and guide business decisions.
• Ability to synthesize ambiguous inputs into clear recommendations, metrics, reports, and decision-ready narratives.
• Strong communication skills, including executive-level communication, structured recommendations, stakeholder-facing updates, and practical operating guidance for product teams.
• Ability to design practical, repeatable processes that are understandable, implementable, and supported across the organization, with a focus on enabling consistent execution rather than advisory strategy alone.
• Equivalent combination of related education, training, and experience may be considered in place of the above qualifications.

Additional Competencies, Knowledge, and Skills

• Experience with product lifecycle, product operations, product commercialization, or portfolio management in enterprise software.
• Experience with end-of-life, migration, legacy modernization, or product rationalization programs.
• Experience with SaaS business models, marketplace, partner, or channel strategies, pricing and packaging, or commercial readiness.
• Experience building dashboards, scorecards, or product health reporting.
• Experience with Jira, ServiceNow, product roadmapping tools, or enterprise reporting systems.
• PMP, Pragmatic, product operations, or related program/product management training.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, prescription, dental, and vision plans.
• Onsite Health Care Center (HQ) free to employees and family members enrolled in the PPO plan, with a pharmacy that ships prescriptions at no additional charge.
• Industry-leading 401k plan.
• Tuition Assistance Program and resources for professional development.
• Generous time off, including vacation, paid holidays, and the U.S. Winter Wellness Break (December 25 - January 1).
• Volunteer Time Off, parental leave, and unlimited paid sick days.
• Generous childcare benefits for all full-time employees.

Location: Hybrid, Cary, North Carolina

Authorization: Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring sponsorship for employment visa status.