Director - Product Management-Emerging Technology and Innovation
See yourself at Twilio
Join the team as our next Director of Product Management on Twilio’s Emerging Technology and Innovation.
About the job
At Twilio, our team is dedicated to identifying, exploring, and developing disruptive new products and platforms that anticipate what the world will need three to five years ahead. We unite world-class product, engineering, design, and research talent to transform ambitious concepts into market-defining realities. As Director of Product Management, you’ll be instrumental in scaling our Horizon 3 impact and shaping the next S-curve of our company’s growth.
We are seeking a visionary and entrepreneurial leader passionate about building the future, not just improving the present. In this role, you will lead a team of product managers focused on Horizon 3 innovation—imagining, shaping, and validating breakthrough product concepts that could fundamentally transform the enterprise landscape over the next 3-5+ years.
As a leader on the team, your mandate is to look beyond current product lines and incremental enhancements. You will actively scout emerging technologies, societal and industry shifts, and nascent user problems with the potential to unlock new markets and create transformational value. You’ll architect the team’s approach for discovering, prioritizing, and validating bold product bets, nurturing a culture of curiosity, structured experimentation, and customer-centric innovation. Working side-by-side with world-class researchers, engineers, and designers, you will take bold, unproven ideas from whiteboard to working prototype—navigating ambiguity, systematically de-risking concepts, and driving structured experimentation.
You’ll drive the vision for moonshot initiatives, frame the strategic bets worth making, and build the business case for high-risk, high-reward ventures that position our company at the forefront of the industry. Your success is measured not just by the products incubated, but by your ability to create a steady pipeline of validated future bets and elevate the organization’s long-term innovation capacity
Responsibilities
In this role, you’ll:
Define Horizon 3 strategy: Lead the exploration of various technological trends, their implications for business and thus areas of opportunity for Twilio
Innovation Portfolio Management: Define and drive the portfolio strategy for disruptive product bets, ensuring alignment with company vision and resource allocation for long-term opportunities.
Vision & Foresight: Provide market and technology intelligence, connecting external trends, customer “weak signals,” and internal capabilities to identify transformational product opportunities.
Structured Experimentation: Instill repeatable frameworks for hypothesis-driven discovery, rapid prototyping, validation, and early-stage business case development across the team.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Build strong partnerships across engineering, research, design, go-to-market, and corporate strategy functions.
Market & User Research: Coach the team on customer interviews, gathering market intelligence, analyzing usage patterns, and synthesizing insights from early testing to inform ongoing project direction.
Stakeholder Engagement: Communicate strategic vision, product rationale, and outcomes to executive leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
Team Leadership and Culture building: Recruit, mentor, and lead a diverse team of Horizon 3 Product Managers. Foster a culture of psychological safety, creative risk-taking, and high performance.
Qualifications
Not all applicants will have skills that match a job description exactly. Twilio values diverse experiences in other industries, and we encourage everyone who meets the required qualifications to apply. While having “desired” qualifications make for a strong candidate, we encourage applicants with alternative experiences to also apply. If your career is just starting or hasn't followed a traditional path, don't let that stop you from considering Twilio. We are always looking for people who will bring something new to the table!
Required:
Proven experience (10+ years) as a Director or Senior Product Manager leading high caliber, cross-functional teams in a zero to one environment, ideally in a technology/enterprise SaaS, platform, or developer-centric organization.
Track record of launching new products, features, or experimental projects—ideally with experience in 0→1 product development or R&D environments.
Deep familiarity with emerging technologies and how to translate them into commercially viable offerings.
Strong analytical, conceptual, and user research skills; data-driven but comfortable with ambiguity and hypothesis-driven decision making
Demonstrated ability to recruit, coach, and develop diverse product talent for high-ambiguity, high-risk product domains.
Comfort navigating ambiguity, identifying opportunity in uncertainty, and learning from failure as well as success
Strategic influence and executive communication skills; able to “sell the future,” align diverse stakeholders, and champion big, unconventional ideas
Passion for inclusion, equity, and building a world-class innovation culture
BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
Desired:
Experience working with AI ML technology and customer engagement platforms
Experience working in trust, security, or fraud prevention
Location
This role will be remote and based in the United States or Canada.
Travel
We prioritize connection and opportunities to build relationships with our customers and each other. For this role, you may be required to travel occasionally to participate in project or team in-person meetings.
What We Offer
Working at Twilio offers many benefits, including competitive pay, generous time off, ample parental and wellness leave, healthcare, a retirement savings program, and much more. Offerings vary by location.
Compensation
*Please note this role is open to candidates outside of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Washington D.C., and Washington State. The information below is provided for candidates hired in those locations only.
The estimated pay ranges for this role are as follows:
Based in Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont or Washington D.C. : $203,100.00-$253,900.00 .
Based in New York, New Jersey, Washington State, or California (outside of the San Francisco Bay area): $215,100.00-$268,800.00.
Based in the San Francisco Bay area, California: $238,900.00-$298,600.00.
This role may be eligible to participate in Twilio’s equity plan and corporate bonus plan. All roles are generally eligible for the following benefits: health care insurance, 401(k) retirement account, paid sick time, paid personal time off, paid parental leave.
The successful candidate’s starting salary will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location.
Application deadline information
Applications for this role are intended to be accepted until June 20, 2025, but may change based on business needs.
About the job
Apply for this position
Director - Product Management-Emerging Technology and Innovation
See yourself at Twilio
Join the team as our next Director of Product Management on Twilio’s Emerging Technology and Innovation.
About the job
At Twilio, our team is dedicated to identifying, exploring, and developing disruptive new products and platforms that anticipate what the world will need three to five years ahead. We unite world-class product, engineering, design, and research talent to transform ambitious concepts into market-defining realities. As Director of Product Management, you’ll be instrumental in scaling our Horizon 3 impact and shaping the next S-curve of our company’s growth.
We are seeking a visionary and entrepreneurial leader passionate about building the future, not just improving the present. In this role, you will lead a team of product managers focused on Horizon 3 innovation—imagining, shaping, and validating breakthrough product concepts that could fundamentally transform the enterprise landscape over the next 3-5+ years.
As a leader on the team, your mandate is to look beyond current product lines and incremental enhancements. You will actively scout emerging technologies, societal and industry shifts, and nascent user problems with the potential to unlock new markets and create transformational value. You’ll architect the team’s approach for discovering, prioritizing, and validating bold product bets, nurturing a culture of curiosity, structured experimentation, and customer-centric innovation. Working side-by-side with world-class researchers, engineers, and designers, you will take bold, unproven ideas from whiteboard to working prototype—navigating ambiguity, systematically de-risking concepts, and driving structured experimentation.
You’ll drive the vision for moonshot initiatives, frame the strategic bets worth making, and build the business case for high-risk, high-reward ventures that position our company at the forefront of the industry. Your success is measured not just by the products incubated, but by your ability to create a steady pipeline of validated future bets and elevate the organization’s long-term innovation capacity
Responsibilities
In this role, you’ll:
Define Horizon 3 strategy: Lead the exploration of various technological trends, their implications for business and thus areas of opportunity for Twilio
Innovation Portfolio Management: Define and drive the portfolio strategy for disruptive product bets, ensuring alignment with company vision and resource allocation for long-term opportunities.
Vision & Foresight: Provide market and technology intelligence, connecting external trends, customer “weak signals,” and internal capabilities to identify transformational product opportunities.
Structured Experimentation: Instill repeatable frameworks for hypothesis-driven discovery, rapid prototyping, validation, and early-stage business case development across the team.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Build strong partnerships across engineering, research, design, go-to-market, and corporate strategy functions.
Market & User Research: Coach the team on customer interviews, gathering market intelligence, analyzing usage patterns, and synthesizing insights from early testing to inform ongoing project direction.
Stakeholder Engagement: Communicate strategic vision, product rationale, and outcomes to executive leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
Team Leadership and Culture building: Recruit, mentor, and lead a diverse team of Horizon 3 Product Managers. Foster a culture of psychological safety, creative risk-taking, and high performance.
Qualifications
Not all applicants will have skills that match a job description exactly. Twilio values diverse experiences in other industries, and we encourage everyone who meets the required qualifications to apply. While having “desired” qualifications make for a strong candidate, we encourage applicants with alternative experiences to also apply. If your career is just starting or hasn't followed a traditional path, don't let that stop you from considering Twilio. We are always looking for people who will bring something new to the table!
Required:
Proven experience (10+ years) as a Director or Senior Product Manager leading high caliber, cross-functional teams in a zero to one environment, ideally in a technology/enterprise SaaS, platform, or developer-centric organization.
Track record of launching new products, features, or experimental projects—ideally with experience in 0→1 product development or R&D environments.
Deep familiarity with emerging technologies and how to translate them into commercially viable offerings.
Strong analytical, conceptual, and user research skills; data-driven but comfortable with ambiguity and hypothesis-driven decision making
Demonstrated ability to recruit, coach, and develop diverse product talent for high-ambiguity, high-risk product domains.
Comfort navigating ambiguity, identifying opportunity in uncertainty, and learning from failure as well as success
Strategic influence and executive communication skills; able to “sell the future,” align diverse stakeholders, and champion big, unconventional ideas
Passion for inclusion, equity, and building a world-class innovation culture
BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
Desired:
Experience working with AI ML technology and customer engagement platforms
Experience working in trust, security, or fraud prevention
Location
This role will be remote and based in the United States or Canada.
Travel
We prioritize connection and opportunities to build relationships with our customers and each other. For this role, you may be required to travel occasionally to participate in project or team in-person meetings.
What We Offer
Working at Twilio offers many benefits, including competitive pay, generous time off, ample parental and wellness leave, healthcare, a retirement savings program, and much more. Offerings vary by location.
Compensation
*Please note this role is open to candidates outside of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Washington D.C., and Washington State. The information below is provided for candidates hired in those locations only.
The estimated pay ranges for this role are as follows:
Based in Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont or Washington D.C. : $203,100.00-$253,900.00 .
Based in New York, New Jersey, Washington State, or California (outside of the San Francisco Bay area): $215,100.00-$268,800.00.
Based in the San Francisco Bay area, California: $238,900.00-$298,600.00.
This role may be eligible to participate in Twilio’s equity plan and corporate bonus plan. All roles are generally eligible for the following benefits: health care insurance, 401(k) retirement account, paid sick time, paid personal time off, paid parental leave.
The successful candidate’s starting salary will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location.
Application deadline information
Applications for this role are intended to be accepted until June 20, 2025, but may change based on business needs.