Product Manager

Descartes Unites the People and Technology that Move the World

The need for efficient, secure, and agile supply chains and logistics operations has become ever more critical and complex.  By combining innovative technology, powerful trade intelligence and the reach of our network, Descartes helps get goods, information, transportation assets, and people where they’re needed, when they’re needed. 

We’re one of the most broadly deployed logistics and supply chain technology companies in the world. More than 26,000 customers around the globe use our cloud-based solutions to transform the way they move inventory and information to enhance productivity, better serve customers, thrive competitively, keep pace with evolving regulations, and respond to rapidly changing market conditions. Descartes is publicly traded (Nasdaq:DSGX, TSX:DSG) with headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and offices and partners around the world. With record financial performance for more than 16 years, we lead the industry in innovation investment. Every day, logistics service providers, manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and other logistics-intensive businesses of all sizes rely on our scale, stability, and comprehensive solution footprint to move what’s most important to them. Learn more at www.descartes.com. 
 
We’re growing fast and invite you to join our amazing team. 

Mission – Why This Role Exists

Descartes pixi™ is a flexible, scalable Warehouse Management System (WMS) for eCommerce order fulfilment, trusted by merchants in the DACH market (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) – online pure players, brands and manufacturers, fulfilment providers, and B2B wholesale distributors – to automate their warehouse and logistics processes from order receipt through shipment and returns, and to scale through seasonal peaks.  It is part of the Descartes eCommerce portfolio alongside solutions such as Peoplevox, ShipRush, XPS Ship, Sellercloud, Finale Inventory, Pacejet, and OrderMine.

Your mission: grow adoption, retention, and revenue of a mature, market-proven platform while modernising it – with automation and AI – without breaking what customers depend on every day.  This is not a greenfield role.  It is a role for a Product Manager with high agency who finds the harder, more interesting problem in evolving a product with a loyal installed base, real revenue, and real operational stakes – and who treats real autonomy as something to use, not wait on.

The Role at a Glance

• Location: Remote-first within Germany, with regular customer and warehouse visits across the DACH region
• Scope: Full ownership of the pixi product area – roadmap, commercial outcomes, and success metrics – within the Descartes eCommerce product organisation

What You'll Do

Own the Product Lifecycle.  Lead your product area from discovery and validation through development, launch, and continuous improvement.  Customer needs and business objectives stay at the centre of every decision.

Own Commercial Outcomes.  Drive – not just support – pricing, packaging, and monetisation decisions for your area.  You are accountable for measurable results in adoption, retention, and revenue, working hand in hand with Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success.

Live with Your Customers.  Spend regular, structured time with customers: discovery interviews, on-site warehouse visits, and direct engagement with the merchants who run their fulfilment on pixi.  You will know your top customers by name and by workflow.

Master the Ecosystem.  pixi operates in the DACH eCommerce integration landscape, spanning carriers, shop systems, ERPs, and marketplaces.  Prioritising and evolving these integrations is a core part of the job, not a side task.

Modernise with Judgment.  Make deliberate trade-offs between new capability, technical debt, and platform stability.  Define migration paths that bring the platform forward while protecting the installed base that trusts it.

Build for Scale.  Identify opportunities to improve platform capabilities and internal processes by leveraging automation, AI, and data-driven insights – aligned with Descartes' broader AI initiatives – to enhance customer outcomes and operational efficiency.

Leverage the Portfolio.  Identify cross-sell and shared-capability opportunities across the Descartes eCommerce portfolio, and represent pixi in portfolio-level product decisions.

Execute with Focus.  Translate strategy into clear requirements, own and maintain the roadmap in our product management system, prioritise ruthlessly, present at quarterly product reviews, and deliver with Engineering on time.

What Success Looks Like

We measure this role on outcomes, not activity.  Concrete targets will be agreed with you, but the shape is:

• First 90 days: You know the top 20 customers and their workflows, you have an instrumented baseline for your key metrics, and you have pressure-tested the current roadmap against it.
• 6 months: You have shipped your first revenue or retention initiative with a measurable result.
• 12 months: Demonstrable movement on the agreed adoption, retention, and revenue targets [targets to be defined], and a roadmap the business trusts.

How We Work

The eCommerce product team moves fast, operates with a lot of autonomy, and focuses on outcomes over activity.  A few tenets we expect you to adopt and model:

• Operate with high agency.  If something is broken, unclear, or missing, don't wait for permission to improve it.  When things are ambiguous, your job is to create clarity and propose a path forward.
• Bias toward action.  Progress beats polish.  When in doubt, make a decision, document the reasoning, and move – if it turns out to be wrong, we adjust.  Asking for help early is a leadership behaviour, not a weakness.
• Outcomes, not output.  Always start with “why does this matter?” Quick, directional math is usually enough to prioritise.  Shipping work is not the same as creating impact – we care about whether it moved the needle.
• Communicate with candour and discipline.  Say what needs to be said, respectfully.  In a remote environment, communication is a large part of execution – share decisions, progress, and risks early, and don't let stakeholders learn about surprises after the fact.

What You'll Bring

• 5–7+ years of Product Management experience in B2B SaaS, ideally within eCommerce, fulfilment, logistics, or marketplace platforms.
• Fluent German and English language skills (written and spoken) are essential, as you will work closely with German-speaking customers, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams.
• A proven track record of delivering measurable improvements in customer growth, retention, monetisation, or operational efficiency – you can point to the numbers.
• High agency: a history of creating clarity in ambiguous situations, proposing a path forward, and acting without waiting for perfect information or permission.
• Experience managing a mature product or platform – balancing modernisation, migrations, and technical debt against the needs of an existing customer base – is a strong plus.
• Working knowledge of the DACH eCommerce ecosystem (carriers, shop systems, ERPs, marketplaces), or demonstrated ability to build deep domain expertise fast.
• Strong commercial awareness combined with solid technical understanding of SaaS platforms and complex system integrations.
• Experience using data to drive product decisions, with familiarity in AI-enabled tools and workflow automation.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence across technical and commercial teams.
• The ability to balance long-term product strategy with pragmatic day-to-day execution.

Culture Add: TEAM Values

We value team members who:

• Demonstrate Transparency by communicating openly, honestly, and building trust across teams.
• Strive for Excellence & Expertise by maintaining high standards and continually developing their professional knowledge.
• Take Accountability by owning outcomes, following through on commitments, and accepting responsibility for results.
• Focus on Metric-Driven Results by making data-informed decisions that create measurable business and customer value.

Aptitudes

• Smart: Able to understand complex systems, connect ideas, and make sound decisions.
• Curious: Eager to understand customer challenges, explore new technologies, and continuously improve.
• Coachable: Open to feedback and committed to ongoing personal and professional development.
• Work Ethic: Persistent, self-motivated, and committed to delivering results.
• Track Record: Demonstrated success delivering impactful SaaS or eCommerce products.
• Responsibility: Takes ownership of products, decisions, and business outcomes.
• Honesty: Acts with integrity, transparency, and a customer-first mindset.

What's in It for You

• Flexible Working: A remote-first environment that supports flexibility while encouraging collaboration.
• Professional Growth: Opportunities to develop your career within a growing international SaaS organization, working alongside experienced product and technology leaders.
• Meaningful Impact: Shape the future of the pixi platform and directly influence customer success and business growth.
• Collaborative Environment: Join a team that values open communication, ownership, continuous learning, and cross-functional partnership.
• Autonomy with Support: Take ownership of your product area while benefiting from strong leadership and collaboration across Engineering, Product, and Commercial teams.

Why Join Descartes?

This is an opportunity to own a strategically important product area with real autonomy and visibility, inside the world's largest logistics technology portfolio.  At Descartes, we value clarity, customer focus, collaboration, and measurable outcomes.  If you're energised by evolving a product that real businesses depend on every day – and by being measured on the results – we'd love to hear from you.

Join Us

As we scale, we’re looking for new doers, collaborators and innovators to join Descartes in uniting the people and technology that move the world as the Global Leader in Logistics and Supply Chain Technology. We’re entrepreneurial, hardworking, geeky-in-a-good way problem solvers. Guided by our values, we nurture a TEAM focused culture that invests in people and creates opportunities for advancement across a broad spectrum of career paths. We prioritize work-life balance and foster an environment with the space to take ownership, to be heard, and to carve a path for your individual accomplishments to help drive our success. At Descartes, everyone has a voice and the best idea wins, regardless of who makes it. We offer competitive compensation, great benefits, remote and flexible work hours, and the opportunity to join a company on an awesome mission with a great existing team and trajectory. 

Descartes also has a deep sense of environmental responsibility. Learn more about how we helped our customers save over 552,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2020 by reducing fuel and paper consumption: https://www.descartes.com/who-we-are/social-responsibility-sustainability/environmental-impact.  Join a team that’s committed to working with customers to conserve resources and enhance sustainability. 

If you feel you have 70% of the qualifications we are looking for, and Descartes sounds like the team and the mission you want to be part of, apply now. We can't promise it will be a fit, but we do promise to consider your experience. 

We conduct a mix of in-person and virtual interviews. Virtual interviews are held via Microsoft Teams and are recorded and transcribed. We may utilize AI tools to support our hiring team in notetaking, summarization, and internal training. AI tools are not used in our recruitment process for decision-making purposes. Recordings, transcripts, and notes are used for recruitment, including improvement of our process, and record-keeping purposes. Should you have any questions or concerns about our process, please connect with our hiring team in advance of scheduled interviews. 

We are an Equal Employment employer. We do not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, protected status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial, or local law. For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please review our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics at Descartes.com