VP, Head of Digital Product Engineering
Dentsu · United States, - New York
Job Description:
Merkle is seeking a VP, Head of Digital Product Engineering to lead the commercial growth, market strategy, and continued evolution of our Digital Product Engineering practice. This executive will help clients solve complex business and technology challenges when commercially available platforms do not fully meet their needs, creating custom digital products and experiences that bridge the gap between client needs and existing market solutions.
This is a highly client-facing, commercial leadership role. You will build relationships with senior client executives, identify and shape new opportunities, lead product and technology solutioning, and help grow both existing accounts and net-new business. You will bring together product thinking, custom engineering, cloud-native development, and applied AI to create differentiated solutions that deliver measurable business value.
You will spend approximately 50% to 70% of your time externally focused on clients, market development, solutioning, and commercial growth. The remaining time will be dedicated to providing executive oversight of active engagements, supporting practice direction, and ensuring our teams deliver innovative, high-quality solutions. You will not manage day-to-day delivery or have direct people-management responsibilities, but you will serve as an influential practice leader and trusted partner to our delivery and engineering leadership.
The ideal candidate began their career close to the engineering craft and has progressed into product, consulting, and commercial leadership. You can engage credibly in architecture and engineering discussions while also leading strategic conversations with CMOs, CIOs, CTOs, business leaders, and product executives. You know how to turn emerging technologies into practical products and can inspire confidence by helping clients see opportunities beyond what they are currently asking for.
You will report to the President, Digital Business Transformation.
This role is open to candidates located within the United States. Employees within 90 minutes of our New York, Michigan, California, or Illinois offices may be expected to work onsite three days per week. This is a remote role for non-commutable candidates within the United States. Travel of approximately 30% to 50% is expected for client meetings, workshops, pitches, conferences, and team collaboration.
Responsibilities
Commercial Growth & Market Leadership
- Own the commercial growth strategy for the Digital Product Engineering practice, with accountability for revenue growth and margin performance.
- Expand existing client relationships while helping establish new client accounts and market opportunities.
- Build trusted relationships with senior client executives across business, marketing, product, data, and technology organizations.
- Lead executive-level discovery, product strategy, and solutioning conversations that uncover unmet needs and translate them into commercially viable opportunities.
- Support pitches, proposals, RFPs, business cases, demonstrations, and other pre-sales activities.
- Partner with account and growth leaders to bring Digital Product Engineering capabilities into broader dentsu and Merkle client relationships.
- Represent the practice in the market through executive conversations, conferences, thought leadership, and industry engagement.
- Inspire client confidence through a combination of technical credibility, product vision, commercial judgment, and executive presence.
Product Strategy, Solutioning & Innovation
- Define differentiated product and engineering solutions for complex client needs that cannot be fully addressed through commercially available platforms.
- Apply modern product-development practices to shape product visions, roadmaps, value propositions, and measurable success criteria.
- Translate emerging technologies into practical, scalable products and services that create meaningful client value.
- Lead the development of solutions using applied AI, helping clients use AI models and capabilities to create and improve digital products.
- Maintain a strong conceptual understanding of AI, cloud-native engineering, composable architecture, full-stack engineering, DevOps, and contemporary product practices.
- Use AI-assisted development approaches, rapid prototyping, and experimentation to demonstrate possibilities and accelerate solution development.
- Remain ahead of client demand by continuously exploring new technologies, product patterns, and methods of solving business problems.
- Partner with product, engineering, architecture, strategy, creative, data, and delivery leaders to develop integrated solutions.
Practice Leadership & Delivery Oversight
- Serve as the commercial and go-to-market leader for the Digital Product Engineering practice.
- Establish and communicate a clear market position for the practice, including its capabilities, differentiators, offerings, and growth priorities.
- Provide visible leadership to the broader practice and help create alignment across product, engineering, architecture, and delivery teams.
- Operate as an influential leader of leaders without relying on direct reporting relationships.
- Partner closely with delivery leadership to ensure commercial commitments can be delivered successfully and profitably.
- Provide executive oversight for active engagements, identifying risks, removing barriers, and helping teams navigate complex client environments.
- Maintain awareness of delivery health, client satisfaction, revenue, margin, and account-expansion opportunities without managing day-to-day execution.
- Help build repeatable solution patterns, offerings, demonstrations, and points of view that improve the practice’s ability to sell and scale.
- Champion a culture of innovation, adaptability, critical thinking, continuous improvement, and client value.
What Success Looks Like
- Digital Product Engineering is recognized by clients as the team that solves complex problems where standard platforms and commercially available products fall short.
- The practice grows revenue and margin across existing accounts while establishing new client relationships.
- Clients view you as a trusted executive advisor who brings forward ideas and opportunities beyond the immediate request.
- New solutions and offerings effectively incorporate applied AI, cloud-native engineering, and modern product-development approaches.
- Product opportunities are translated into clear, compelling, and commercially viable solutions.
- Delivery and commercial leaders operate as strong partners, with clear alignment between what is sold and what can be successfully delivered.
- The practice has a compelling market story, differentiated offerings, and repeatable solution patterns that support continued growth.
- You establish credibility across industries and can adapt your communication to executives, business owners, product leaders, technologists, and delivery teams.
- Teams view you as a unifying practice leader who creates direction and momentum, even without formal people-management authority.
Qualifications
- Approximately 15 or more years of progressively responsible experience in product engineering, digital product development, software engineering, technology consulting, or related disciplines.
- A career foundation in hands-on engineering, architecture, or technical delivery, followed by increasing responsibility in product, client, and commercial leadership.
- Demonstrated success shaping and selling custom digital products, engineering solutions, or technology-enabled transformation programs.
- Experience growing existing client relationships and supporting or leading net-new business development.
- Strong product leadership capabilities, supported by credible experience and knowledge across software engineering and architecture.
- Ability to lead product discovery,