Forward Deployed Product Manager

At West Monroe, we believe the next generation of consulting will be built by small, highly capable teams that ship real software, solve hard problems, and create measurable value quickly.

We are hiring a Senior / Principal Forward Deployed Product Manager to help build and deploy Operational Intelligence solutions for clients. This is a role for people who lead with curiosity about how work really happens; who want to spend time in the field observing operations, understanding workflows firsthand, shaping products in real environments, driving adoption, and helping turn new ideas into durable capabilities.

You will work directly with clients and cross-functional teammates to deliver production-ready solutions that improve how businesses operate. One engagement might involve embedding with a client team for days, mapping how work actually flows (not how it's documented), and shaping an application that simplifies a fragmented process. Another might involve running a pilot with frontline users, catching adoption failures through direct observation, and helping client leaders understand the value created. The work is varied, fast-moving, and centered on real-world adoption.

 This role is best suited for someone who wants to build more than document, who treats field research as the foundation for product decisions (not a phase to get through), and who wants to help shape both client outcomes and the future of West Monroe's operational intelligence capabilities.

About the role

 You will play a leading role in discovering user needs, shaping product direction, and driving adoption in client environments. You will work across ethnographic research, workflow design, pilot execution, stakeholder alignment, training, and handoff. You will move from field observation to synthesis to product definition to measurable business impact, often in close partnership with users, client leaders, and an engineering counterpart.

You will operate as part of a small, high-autonomy deployment team paired with a forward deployed engineer. Together, you own the full client outcome. You shape what gets built; your counterpart builds it. The quality of your fieldwork upstream determines whether the product gets adopted downstream.

You will also contribute to repeatable research methods, adoption playbooks, and reusable assets that can be applied across engagements. Every deployment should make the next one better. This is not just a delivery role. It is a build role; for products, for methods, and for the team's capabilities over time.

By the time you have completed a few projects, you will have shaped and launched products across a wide range of environments, business problems, and operational contexts, with more variety and end-to-end ownership than many traditional product roles offer.

What you will do

• Conduct deep, field-based research by embedding with client teams to understand how work actually happens; shadowing operators through shifts, mapping workflows end to end, identifying pain points and workarounds, and surfacing the tacit knowledge that lives in people's heads rather than in documentation
• Synthesize messy field observations into coherent models of how work flows, where real friction exists (versus where people say it exists), and what interventions will survive contact with operational reality
• Design lo-fi prototypes and workflow concepts with process owners in the field; translate what you learned into product artifacts that help teams move quickly from ambiguous problems to usable solutions
• Partner closely with your engineering counterpart to shape product direction, make tradeoffs, and identify where automation, AI, or intelligent tooling fits into a client's operational workflows
• Lead pilot programs with real users, gather structured feedback, and refine products based on what drives adoption and value; catch adoption failures early through ongoing observation, not just dashboards
• Drive research-informed training and enablement that fits users' actual mental models, so new tools are understood, trusted, and used in day-to-day operations
• Measure and communicate business impact by baselining current performance, tracking outcomes, and helping stakeholders understand the value created
• Support successful handoff by building adoption roadmaps, documentation, and internal client capability to sustain and expand usage after deployment
• Contribute deployment learnings back to the platform and methods teams: recurring workflow patterns, missing capabilities, templates that should be codified, approaches that worked and approaches that did not
• Help build and refine service design playbooks, discovery methods, and adoption approaches that other team members can run independently

We are looking for people who care deeply about understanding how work really happens and turning that understanding into products that real people adopt. You are likely a strong fit if:

• You are energized by messy, real-world workflows and want to understand them firsthand before prescribing solutions
• You have depth in qualitative research methods; contextual inquiry, shadowing, ethnographic observation, participatory design; and you know how to synthesize what you find into something actionable
• You are comfortable making product decisions, not just informing them; you own what gets built for a client, shaped by what you learned in the field
• You are technically conversant enough to have real tradeoff conversations with engineers about what is feasible, what is expensive, and where intelligent automation fits
• You can move between discovery, prototyping, delivery, and adoption without needing someone else to connect the dots
• You are strong in ambiguous environments and can create clarity where none exists
• You care about measurable outcomes, not just shipping features
• You can build rapport quickly with people who are not knowledge workers and may be skeptical of new technology
• You want to help shape not just project outcomes, but how a team builds and delivers over time

Qualifications

Required:

• 5+ years of experience in product management, UX research, service design, consulting, operations transformation, or a related role with significant client-facing or field-based responsibility
• Demonstrated experience conducting qualitative research in complex operational environments and translating findings into product direction and execution
• Strong synthesis skills; the ability to turn extended field observation into structured models of how work flows, where value is lost, and what interventions will stick
• Track record of driving technology adoption, behavior change, or rollout success with non-technical or frontline user populations
• Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills across frontline users, client core teams, and executive audiences
• Experience partnering closely with engineering teams to shape and deliver technology solutions; enough technical fluency to have real conversations about feasibility, architecture, and tradeoffs
• Ability to operate autonomously in fast-paced, ambiguous client environments with minimal supervision
• Experience with pilot program design, phased rollouts, and adoption strategy
• Willingness to travel and embed on-site with clients as needed

Preferred:

• Comfort with ethnographic and contextual research methods in physical, distributed, or operationally complex environments; not just digital product research
• Familiarity with AI or ML concepts and the ability to identify practical opportunities for intelligent automation in operational workflows
• Experience in industries such as field services, logistics, construction, manufacturing, or utilities
• Experience working in continuous delivery environments with fast feedback loops
• Prior consulting, forward deployed, embedded, or client-facing product experience
• Experience codifying research methods, service design playbooks, or operational approaches so that others can run them independently
• Experience developing training materials, enablement programs, or post-launch adoption plans

How you will work

You will spend much of your time close to users and stakeholders. Some weeks that will mean multi-day site embeds: observing field operations, mapping workflows, running contextual interviews, or testing prototypes with process owners. Other weeks it will mean facilitating tradeoff decisions with your engineering counterpart, running pilot check-ins, refining rollout plans, or helping executives understand progress and impact.

You will work on small teams with high ownership. You will be paired with an engineering counterpart, and between the two of you, you own the full client outcome. You will be expected to move between strategic thinking and practical execution, and to shift between discovery, delivery, and adoption work in the same week. Your research needs to be fast enough to be actionable within a deployment cadence measured in days, not months.

This role is not built for someone who wants to stay narrowly scoped, avoid ambiguity, or sit far from users. It is built for someone who wants to shape what gets built, make sure it gets used, and leave behind methods that make the next team better.

Why this role is compelling

• You will work on real problems in real operating environments
• You will help shape products that improve how people do their jobs every day
• You will have end-to-end ownership, from early discovery through adoption and handoff
• You will work across a wide range of use cases, industries, and client contexts
• You will help shape how West Monroe builds and deploys operational intelligence solutions
• You will contribute to both immediate client outcomes and longer-term platform innovation

Who should be excited about this role

This role is a strong fit for people who want:

• More real-world discovery, less distance from users
• More ownership, less narrow coordination
• More shaping and shipping, less passive backlog management
• More exposure to business outcomes, less abstraction
• More opportunities to create durable capabilities, not just deliver one-off projects