Product Manager - Patient Access Product Innovation

Valeris is a fully integrated life sciences commercialization partner that provides comprehensive solutions that span the entire healthcare value chain. Formed by the merger of PharmaCord and Mercalis, Valeris™ revolutionizes the path from life sciences innovation to real-life impact to build a world in which every patient gets the care they need. Valeris works on behalf of life sciences companies to improve the patient experience so that patients can access and adhere to critical medications. Backed by proven industry expertise, a deep commitment to patient care, the latest technology, and exceptionally talented team members, Valeris provides the data and strategic insights, patient support services and healthcare provider engagement tools to help life sciences companies successfully commercialize new products. Valeris provides commercialization solutions to more than 500 life sciences customers and has provided access and affordability support to millions of patients. The company is headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina and Jeffersonville, Indiana. To learn more about Valeris, please visit www.valeris.com.

The Product Manager, Patient Access Product Innovation owns the product direction for Valeris’s next-generation patient access technology and leads the Product Owners who own its individual product areas. You decide what is built once and shared versus built for a specific area, and how requests are turned into configurable, scalable product, and you set the priorities that Product Owners execute. This role is both internally and externally facing: you represent the product to senior leadership and to current and prospective customers, including conducting product demonstrations.

This role sits on the Patient Access Product Innovation team and reports to the VP, Patient Access Innovation. You work two-in-a-box with an engineering lead, partner with Operations, implementation and cross-functional readiness teams, and represent product direction to senior leadership.

Key Responsibilities:

Product & Portfolio Strategy

• Own the product definition and vision for the shared platform and the portfolio of product areas built on it.
• Articulate the problems that users and buyers face, and the value of solving them, and use that to prioritize the work that delivers the highest value; bring requests from many customers and sources together into one configurable, scalable product.
• Maintain a capability record and answer requirement and pre-sale questions against it within committed turnaround and in accordance with the product roadmap: available today, planned next, or future consideration.
• Lead customer discovery and validation sessions to test assumptions and shape direction.

Prioritization & Roadmap

• Set priorities across the portfolio, with a single stack-ranked backlog, gathering input from stakeholders and building consensus where a group decision is needed.
• Bring initiatives to leadership prioritization ready to be evaluated, and publish the resulting roadmap, including the sequencing of coupled work.
• Run a regular roadmap review (at least quarterly) with Product Owners, the engineering lead and senior stakeholders, and re-prioritize as commitments and data change.
• Share the roadmap with Operations, implementation and sales teams and, where approved, with customers and prospects.

Build & Delivery Oversight

• Ensure approved initiatives become outcome briefs, epics, stories and acceptance criteria that engineers can build efficiently with minimal iteration, and run the cadence with the engineering lead.
• Own the shared platform backlog directly, including non-functional requirements for security, auditability, performance and privacy, and review Product Owner backlogs for quality, readiness and dependency conflicts.
• Run backlog refinement for the platform backlog and a recurring cross-team refinement and dependency review with the Product Owners, so every committed item is ready, sized and sequenced before it is scheduled.
• Own release readiness: accept completed platform work, and confirm that the capabilities each committed product launch depends on exist, are configurable and are tested before the go-live date.
• Own release planning and launch communication for platform capabilities.

Team Leadership & Scaling

• Lead, coach and develop the Product Owners (and analysts); set expectations, give feedback and build a progression path from owner to manager.
• Model AI-assisted ways of working (requirements drafting, documentation, backlog grooming) for Product Owners and analysts as they build product judgment.
• Establish product-ownership practices (requirements templates, definition of ready and done, backlog hygiene) consistent across the Innovation teams, and help hire and onboard additional product capacity as demand grows.

Customer & Market Engagement (Internal and External)

• Demonstrate your products to internal stakeholders and to current and prospective customers, and join deeper discussions with broader or more technical audiences as a sales cycle progresses.
• Train the solutions sales and strategy team to give product demonstrations in sales calls, so Product is brought in for depth rather than first-line demos.
• Present the roadmap and capabilities in customer and prospect conversations, alongside Sales and leadership, using approved messaging.
• Support pursuits with Sales and Marketing: pre-sale technical and product questions, requirement and RFP responses, and demonstration content.
• Capture customer and prospect feedback and incorporate into prioritization.

Go-to-Market & Leadership Partnership

• Draft the product definitions and PR/FAQs for platform and product capabilities, accountable for the initial draft, which Marketing then iterates for external audiences; and serve as the product expert in the cross-functional readiness workstreams (Marketing, Sales Enablement, Pricing & Commercial, Compliance/Regulatory/Legal, Operations and Communications) that carry a capability from built to market-ready.
• Partner with those workstreams to move each significant capability through its readiness steps, escalating blockers rather than letting a launch slip silently.
• Create and present product definitions, roadmap updates and launch readiness to senior leadership, representing the platform and product portfolio at the executive level.

Measurement & Partnership

• Instrument the platform so efficiency and operational cycle-time gains (how long a case takes to move through a workflow, not engineering delivery time) are measurable per workflow and per program, and use the data to shape the roadmap and prioritization.
• Partner with the other Innovation teams so shared needs are built once, and with Operations to see how work actually happens today.
• Use AI tools daily to accelerate requirements drafting, analysis and documentation, stay current on agentic and orchestration patterns, and set the same expectation across the product team.
• Build working prototypes with AI-assisted tools to test product concepts, sharpen requirements and demonstrate platform capabilities before work reaches engineering.

Standards & Accountabilities

• Utilize Valeris’s values as the driving force behind the team’s success.
• On time adherence to training deadlines for all corporate policies and procedures.
• Ensure all SOPs are followed with consistency.
• Perform other duties as assigned, including additional tasks or projects.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, you will help Valeris:

• Deliver each committed product launch on its date with the capabilities it depends on tested and in place.
• Publish a capability record, aligned to the roadmap, that Product Owners, engineers and the implementation team trust.
• Raise the share of customer needs met by standard product and configuration, release over release, with value measured in efficiency and operational cycle-time gains.
• Run a single prioritized backlog whose stories engineers can build efficiently with minimal iteration.
• Give senior leadership and go-to-market stakeholders a clear, current view of what is built, what is launch-ready and what is still in flight, backed by product definitions and PR/FAQs they can rely on.
• Build a Product Owner team that can own product areas independently.
• Represent the product credibly with customers and prospects, so Sales and implementation teams can rely on Product for training, deeper demonstrations, roadmap conversations and pre-sale answers.

Qualifications:

Required Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, information systems or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8 or more years of total experience, including at least 5 years in product management or product ownership roles on a platform, workflow or integration product, at least 2 of them leading other product professionals, and including owning a backlog for an engineering team.
• Demonstrated experience defining platform capabilities, APIs and configuration that other teams build against, and holding the boundary between platform and application.
• Hands-on experience with workflow, rules or integration platforms, and a working understanding of API-based architectures.
• Proven ability to hold the line on scope with senior operations, sales and product leaders in a matrixed organization when a date or a boundary is at risk.
• Experience creating product definitions, PR/FAQs or similar go-to-market artifacts, and presenting to executive or leadership audiences.
• Experience conducting product demonstrations and roadmap presentations for customers or prospects, including consultative conversations with executive-level clients; occasional travel for customer meetings may be required.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for executive, operational and technical audiences, and hands-on experience building with AI-assisted tools (for example, prototyping with Claude, Copilot or ChatGPT), not just using their output day to day.

Preferred Experience

• 12 or more years of total experience, with 7 or more years in product management roles and 4 or more years leading product teams, including having shipped a platform or multi-product portfolio.
• Healthcare, pharmaceutical patient services, hub services, specialty pharmacy or payer operations, with a working understanding of PHI handling and compliance constraints.
• Experience building or owning products on a CRM or case-management platform.
• Experience owning backlogs for AI-enabled, agentic, or automation-driven products.
• Experience delivering AI-enabled capabilities in a regulated environment, or on a platform team serving multiple internal product teams.
• Familiarity with Agile methodology and tools such as Jira or Azure DevOps.
• Familiarity with healthcare interoperability standards (HL7 FHIR, X12, NCPDP).

Physical Demands & Work Environment

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee is frequently required to sit for long periods of time, use hands to type, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms. Prefer candidates who can type at least 35 words per minute with 97% accuracy.

• Although very minimal, flexibility to travel as needed is preferred.

• This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, etc.

Why Work for Valeris?

We’re committed to supporting the well-being and success of our team members. As part of our organization, full-time employees can expect:

• Medical, dental, and vision plans, including HSA- and FSA-eligible options, with Valeris contributing toward premium costs

• Additional health support, including telehealth and Employee Assistance Program (EAP) services

• Company match on Health Savings Account contributions

• Free Basic Life and AD&D coverage equal to your annual earnings, with a minimum of $50,000 and a maximum of $300,000

• Company-paid Short-Term Disability coverage, with the option to purchase Long-Term Disability

• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan with 100% match on the first 5% you contribute, with immediate vesting

• Paid Time Off (PTO) and Sick Leave to support work-life balance

• Team members receive nine paid holidays plus two floating holidays

• Opportunities for advancement in a company that supports personal and professional growth

• A challenging, stimulating work environment that encourages new ideas

• Work for a company that values diversity and makes deliberate efforts to create an inclusive workplace

• A mission-driven, inclusive culture where your work makes a meaningful impact

Any offer of employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a background check and, depending on the position, a drug screen in accordance with company standards. Please note that this job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, or activities associated with the position. Responsibilities and tasks may be modified at any time, with or without notice.

Our Commitment to Equal Opportunity

At Valeris, we don’t just accept difference – we celebrate it, support it and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. Valeris is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.