Principal Technical Product Manager – TrueChoice Defense Customer Deployment

Job description

Job Description Summary As part of the GE Aerospace Digital Technology organization supporting the Defense & Systems (D&S) business, the Principal Technical Product Manager, Customer Deployment Lead owns the strategy, pipeline, and end-to-end execution of complex customer deployments across the TrueChoice Defense (TCD) portfolio. These deployments give defense customers the digital capability to manage their fleets, analyzing their data and delivering the actionable insights and recommendations that keep fleets mission-ready. This is a senior individual-contributor role and the operational lead that moves a customer from opportunity to a fully operational, supported deployment. This person will set deployment strategy, turn approved technical designs into physical and commercial reality, and partner across the Chief Technology Office (CTO), Engineering, Customer Experience, the product line divisions, post-go-live support operations, and external vendors to deliver each rollout on schedule and in compliance. Job Description Roles and Responsibilities: 1. Customer Deployment Pipeline, Win Strategy, and Readiness • Manage the deployment pipeline. Track every active and prospective rollout across the portfolio, surface expansion opportunities, and keep delivery aligned with the sales plan. • Support the win. Partner with the Customer Experience (CX) team to shape win strategies, capture Voice of the Customer (VOC) input, and build the customer readiness documentation that proposals depend on. • Own readiness assessments end to end. Complete customer deployment questionnaires and technical readiness assessments, pulling the required inputs from the CTO and Engineering teams. • Build the cost case. Work across Sales, the CTO, and CX to aggregate inputs, build cost estimates, and author the financial justification for each deployment proposal. • Lead customer solution briefings. Present solution strategy, implementation roadmaps, and deployment schedules to customer leadership, with CTO technical leads supporting the deep-dive architecture discussions. 2. Technical Deployment Leadership and Site Execution • Operationalize the approved design. Turn the approved technical baseline into a working deployment during each customer rollout. • Align timing with customer IT. Coordinate maintenance windows and implementation timing so they fit the deployment roadmap and the customer's operating constraints. • Coordinate site readiness. Facilitate customer IT coordination and site access in support of the technical readiness work led by the enterprise technical team. • Clear the path for installation. Manage site access passes, escort clearances, and facility scheduling for installation engineers during physical server (bare-metal) and hardware installation, in partnership with the CTO team. 3. Procurement Execution, Vendor Onboarding, and Commercial Licensing • Own the procurement workflow. Take the approved hardware list and certified Bill of Materials (BOM) through to commercial execution. • Drive purchasing. Create the internal purchase requisitions (PRs) and commercial purchase orders (POs) from the certified BOM delivered by the enterprise technical team. • Onboard new vendors. Set up new hardware vendors through corporate procurement: vendor master records, credit terms, procurement agreements, and legal and tax documentation. • Manage hardware delivery. Track vendor production schedules, manage the hardware budget, and handle freight, customs clearance, and delivery to customer sites. • Clear software for deployment. Work with external software vendors to secure Trade Agreements Act (TAA) compliance, export clearances, and regional certifications so software can be deployed in each customer's country. • Run vendor demonstrations. Plan, coordinate, and support vendor product demonstrations for customer leadership. 4. Stakeholder, Customer, and Cross-Functional Partnership • Be the operational face to the customer. Serve as the primary operational contact for customer leadership and facility leads throughout implementation. • Manage executive communications. Coordinate with post-go-live support operations, the CTO, and Engineering on the shared customer support channel, and monitor high-priority threads to manage executive communications and service level agreement (SLA) status. • Align government reporting. Partner with support operations to align quarterly government ticket and issue reporting with the program schedule. • Advise site and vendor selection. Represent the deployment function as a consulted stakeholder in technical site surveys and hardware vendor selection led by the CTO team. 5. Operational Handover, Risk, and Compliance Stewardship • Own the handover package. After installation and baseline validation, assemble the operational handover: verified customer contacts and escalation matrices, completed readiness assessments, the final topology diagram, and confirmed support channel access. • Drive the transition gate. Move primary account ownership from active deployment to long-term support once the receiving support organization formally signs off. • Validate before transition. Confirm every escalation path, distribution list, and deployment document is complete before operational handover. • Uphold data and export compliance. Support regional, national, and in-country data sovereignty and export control requirements across the pipeline, in partnership with the CTO and Cybersecurity teams. 6. Leadership and Continuous Improvement • Set the deployment standard. Provide principal-level leadership and mentorship across the D&S Digital Technology team for customer deployment management. • Shorten the cycle. Continuously refine onboarding playbooks, procurement handoffs, and readiness templates to reduce deployment cycle times. • Remove friction across teams. Align the CTO, Engineering, support operations, and vendors to eliminate deployment blockers before they impact a committed date. •