Director of Product - Navigation SDK & Apps

Mapbox is the leading real-time location platform for a new generation of location-aware businesses. Mapbox is the only platform that equips organizations with the full set of tools to power the navigation of people, packages, and vehicles everywhere. More than 3.5 million registered developers have chosen Mapbox because of the platform’s flexibility, security and privacy compliance. Organizations use Mapbox applications, data, SDKs and APIs to create customized and immersive experiences that delight their customers. 

What We Do 

The Navigation SDK and Apps teams power real-time mapping, routing, and location services for thousands of developers worldwide—enabling them to create innovative, reliable, and intuitive experiences across industries such as transportation, retail, logistics, and more.Our developers build apps and navigation experiences that top the App Store and Play Store rankings, and we are constantly working together to help them build what’s next, whether that’s an Augmented Reality app, an AI-powered experience, a popular consumer app, or an autonomous driving experience.

The teams at Mapbox are revolutionizing in-car experiences with technology to build fast, industry-leading maps and navigation for any vehicle. We’ve launched products such as MapGPT, Mapbox for EV, and we’re enhancing the visual experience of in-vehicle navigation with 3D styling with our new Mapbox Standard through web and mobile SDKs. Mapbox has worked with automotive partners—including BMW, Toyota, and GM—to bring the best aspects of mobile app development into in-vehicle navigation and infotainment. 

• Mapbox Navigation: A Guide to Navigation SDK & APIs

• Mapbox Newsroom: AI Features in New Navigation SDK

• Mapbox Blog: Introducing 3D Live Navigation

What You’ll Do 

Navigation is an exciting and complex space. Our customers want routes and turn-by-turn navigation for people, bikes, cars, trucks, and other vehicles in buildings, on sidewalks, roads, trails, and even places where there are no roads or trails. This relies on a lot of data and thought leadership on what navigation experience would be intuitive, reasonable, and optimal for different types of users. 

As a Director of Product at Mapbox, you will be responsible for setting the strategic direction, ensuring product-market fit, and driving execution and customer adoption in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.  You will lead a team of product managers and work closely with engineers, designers, and data scientists to deliver a best-in-class developer experience and unparalleled navigation features via APIs, SDKs, and iOS/Android apps.

In this role, you will: 

• Shape the Vision: Develop and communicate a clear product vision for our Navigation SDK and Apps that is in alignment with overall company goals. Lead, mentor, and grow a team of product managers, instilling product management best practices and fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration.

• Develop the Roadmap: Translate the vision into an executable, data-driven, customer-facing roadmap with engineering teams. Work closely with engineering to ensure we are delivering customer-delighting and operationally excellent features.

• Advocate for the Customer: Engage directly with customers, developers, and key partners to understand their needs, gather feedback, and evangelize the product. Drive customer-centric solutions that elevate the usability and performance of the Navigation product.

• Promote Collaboration and Innovation: Conduct extensive market and competitive research to identify growth opportunities and emerging trends in mapping, geospatial, and navigation technologies.

• Make data-driven decisions: Use analytics, user metrics, and market insights to inform priorities and measure success. Drive continuous improvement through experimentation, A/B testing, and iterative feedback loops.

• Collaborate: Partner with engineering leads to balance feature development with technical debt and platform scalability. Work closely with marketing, sales, and customer success teams to optimize go-to-market strategies, product messaging, and client support.

What We Believe are Important Traits for this Role

• 8+ years of leadership experience: Managed teams and drove strategic initiatives in diverse organizational settings.

• 10+ years of product management experience: Led product development and strategy with a strong track record of successful launches.

• Technical expertise: Our teams and customers are technical and value clinical analyses, critical thinking, and technical depth. Prior experience in delivering APIs, SDKs, and/or iOS/Android Apps would be valuable in this role.

• Strong academic foundation: A Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

• Ownership & execution: Own the technical product vision, lead the strategy, and work alongside engineering counterparts to guide the team in executing the plan to build the future of navigation. 

• Organization building: You understand the 10X difference between good and great engineering organizations and strive to be the force multiplier to help your org get there.  

• Customer focus. You care deeply about your customers and their problems, and you work tirelessly to innovate on their behalf. 

• Growth mindset: Have the humility to accept mistakes, learn and grow from them. 

• Partnership. You get to partner with product, design & key stakeholders to help drive key search decisions that influence the business. 

• Strong written and vocal communication skills. You can talk and write about complex ideas concisely to a wide audience. 

• Operational excellence: You drive a culture of quality and continuous improvement in your organization

• Data-informed mindset: You believe in the value of data-informed decision-making and strive to measure things that are not straightforward but essential. You also have the right instincts to make speedy decisions in the absence of perfect & comprehensive data.

• Hire & elevate: Great leaders understand the importance of hiring the best talent and creating a culture where team members can learn & grow with the organization. You demonstrate investment in coaching and stretching peers across all levels. 

• Experience bringing products to market: You have a proven track record of shipping successful products. You have experience coordinating deadlines, setting pricing, developing a marketing strategy, and enabling support teams.

• High standards for work. You drive a culture of quality on the teams you work with and know how to drive healthy tension between quality and velocity.

Valuable but Not Required Experience  

• Prior experience in Maps and Navigation.  While domain expertise is valuable, at our core, we are individuals who are technical, customer-focused, genuinely curious, adaptive, and eager to transform customer experiences from what they are today.

What We Value

In addition to our core values, which are not unique to this position and are necessary for Mapbox leaders:

• We value high-performing creative individuals who dig into problems and opportunities.

• We believe in individuals being their whole selves at work. We commit to this through supportive health care, parental leave, flexibility for the things that come up in life, and innovating on how we think about supporting our people.

• We emphasize an environment of teaching and learning to equip employees with the tools needed to be successful in their function and the company.

• We strongly believe in the value of growing a diverse team and encourage people of all backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and sexual orientations to apply.

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