Job Posting:

Product Manager, Home Decarbonization 

OPEN Technologies (OPEN) seeks a Product Manager to guide its growing practice area of decarbonizing Canada’s existing housing stock.  Our market research demonstrated that the replacement of old furnaces with high efficiency heat pumps is a singular act that can have huge impact toward achieving our climate targets for the built environment, and that a clear market shift in this direction can scale the heat pump sector exponentially… but achieving this opportunity will require new approaches to stimulating and streamlining the process from homeowner education to installation.  

OPEN has entered the market with a homeowner retrofit engagement platform for cities, and is working on a related marketplace tool to facilitate heat pump adoption.   

As a Product Manager on a small but growing team, you will work closely with the CEO, Manager of Custom Software Solutions, and Development Team to ensure that OPEN’s products serve the company’s critical mission and business goals. Your accountability will be centred on ensuring that initial and future versions of the products offer unique value in addressing the business and mission purpose of the software.

This is envisioned as a full-time permanent role, but contract models will be considered for the right candidate.  

 

About Us

OPEN’s data and software tools help the people that shape our cities to make pro-climate decisions with confidence. For policymakers, incentive designers, capital providers, and industry participants, we translate complex datasets into actionable data to achieve energy and carbon savings from buildings.

OPEN’s suite of products and custom solutions informs energy efficiency and carbon reduction decisions across the built environment, from high performance design solutions for new homes to benchmark and retrofit options for existing towers. And everything in between. 

We are also a small but ambitious group of people aligned around an outward facing mission and a commitment to building a culture of shared exploration, curiosity, and growth.

We have a hybrid work structure where in-person days are based out of our office in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood.  

 

Project Context: 

Realizing the potential to decarbonize Canada’s homes through the mass adoption of heat pumps will require new forms of intermediation, from early homeowner engagement through to installation and aftercare.  OPEN is heartened that these new intermediation pathways – both public and private sector – are emerging, and OPEN has found its seat at the table.  

This includes a project with the City of Saskatoon to deliver a public facing engagement tool that will: 

  • Provide a virtual energy label for every home in the city
  • Engage homeowners in the creation of a home-specific retrofit roadmap
  • Provide homeowners, policymakers, and the general public with a city-wide roadmap of the energy conservation measures that will enable the City to achieve its 50% energy reduction goal by 2030.  

Informed by our prior market research, OPEN is also developing an additional marketplace software offering to streamline and facilitate the process from retrofit vision to successful decarbonization.   

We are aiming for a product launch in Q3 2023, and key elements of the go to market pathway include: 

  • Enhancement and customization of OPEN’s software platforms to the Saskatoon context
  • User testing and client engagement to ensure optimal product market fit
  • Ongoing development of the go-to-market pathway for the marketplace tool.  

 

About You

Every OPEN team member has the same top line item on their role description: to be a part of making OPEN successful, its work impactful, and its work culture collegial, creative, and productive. 

As the Product Manager for a large, strategically critical initiative, your role will be multifaceted. As a strong Product Manager candidate you:

  • have at least three (3) years of experience in an early stage product role, with some leadership experience in bringing new technical products to market – ideally in an enterprise software context – and/or experience in managing an existing product through its early launch and development.
  • have grounding in key methodologies and practices in user research, user experience design, and software production; working with the technical and design teams, you will play a key role in understanding market and user insights and helping to translate those into valuable functional offerings
  • are an effective and empathetic people person, skilled and insightful in understanding the motivations and challenges of OPEN’s customers and users

In addition, particularly strong candidates will:

  • have subject matter expertise in the affordable housing, green building, and energy efficiency sectors 
  • an understanding of the dynamic between stakeholders and a working knowledge of the key market drivers (regulatory, technological, and financial) affecting both that sector and the market potential for OPEN’s product offering
  • have conceptual knowledge and industry understanding in key areas of data science and analysis, including database design, machine learning, and visualization.

 

Compensation and Benefits

The Product Manager will receive a will receive a competitive compensation package commensurate with experience and will be eligible to participate in OPEN’s benefits program after a three month probationary period. 

                                                      

How can you apply?                                                        

We will recruit until we find the right candidate.  If this is you, at your earliest convenience please send the following to info@opentech.eco with the subject line “Last Name, First Name, Product Manager – Home Decarbonization”.  

  1. A brief resume showing relevant experience
  2. A brief cover letter that explains how you meet the requirements and why you are interested in working with OPEN   

 

OPEN strives to build a team that reflects the diversity of the communities we are a part of.  We particularly encourage applicants from groups that are underrepresented in tech such as women, visible minorities, Indigenous persons, LGBTQ2 persons, and persons with disabilities.