Principal Product Manager

Principal Product Manager

Position Summary

Natera is at the forefront of personalized genetic testing, transforming the management of disease worldwide. As we scale our life-saving diagnostics, we are fundamentally transforming how software products are conceived, built, and delivered across our clinical and genomic portfolio.

We are seeking an experienced Principal Digital Product Manager to join our Oncology Comprehensive Genomic Profiling (CGP) Product Engineering team. In this senior individual contributor role, you will serve as the product lead for our most complex platform initiatives — owning end-to-end product strategy and execution across a sophisticated system of interconnected software products.

You will act as the product backbone for our most critical "Pillar" projects. Success in this role demands mastery from three dimensions: partnership with commercial teams to define product strategy/roadmap based on market needs; deep fluency in how end users - lab operations, clinical teams, customer success teams - actually work; and close collaboration with Engineering, R&D, and PMO on product design and delivery. You will synthesize all three into product decisions that hold up end-to-end — from order ingestion through lab execution to patient reporting — ultimately delivering reliable, high-quality solutions that patient care depends on.

Crucially, while this is an individual contributor role, you will operate as a central leader — driving consensus, roadmap alignment, and product excellence through influence rather than formal authority across Engineering, R&D, Commercial, and Clinical teams. You thrive in fluid environments, adapt quickly to change, and chart a clear path forward even amid unknowns.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Define Long-Term Vision: Develop and execute multi-year software product roadmaps for critical business units, balancing rapid prototyping with long-term commercial stability.

• Architect Complex Solutions: Act as a high-level Architect, translating broad business goals into detailed functional workflows. You are accountable for the cohesion and integrity of the final end-to-end solution.

• Founder's Mindset: Champion a culture of high agency and urgency, making quick, data-driven decisions in ambiguous situations to deliver critical milestones in a fast-paced environment.

• Cross-Functional Influence: Lead by expertise rather than authority, aligning stakeholders across R&D, Engineering, Operations, Quality, and Regulatory to ensure the software roadmap meets broader business goals.

Product Excellence & Execution

• End-to-End Ownership: Lead the full product lifecycle for complex software solutions, ensuring a seamless user journey across various system boundaries — from order ingestion through lab execution to patient reporting.

• Technical Translation: Serve as the primary domain expert, translating complex scientific, clinical, or technical requirements into robust, scalable software specifications.

• Operational Immersion: Passionately advocate for internal and external users by regularly shadowing operations and engaging with customers to ensure software solves real-world physical and clinical problems.

• Systems Thinking: Maintain a "big picture" view of how software systems interact across the entire data lifecycle, understanding how upstream decisions ripple through to downstream clinical and reporting outcomes.

• Agile Mastery: Lead with the rigor of a seasoned project manager, owning product backlogs and driving Agile ceremonies to ensure timely delivery of high-quality features.

• AI-Native Product Development: Pioneer the use of LLMs and generative AI tools to accelerate product discovery, automate requirements synthesis, and continuously improve how we deliver value to users.

Regulatory & Quality Leadership

• Compliance Champion: Partner with Quality and Regulatory teams to ensure all products comply with relevant global standards and certifications, including FDA design controls, IEC 62304, and HIPAA.

• Risk Mitigation: Proactively identify and mitigate product risks, ensuring robust documentation and compliance without compromising development velocity.

Mentorship & Craft

• Leveling Up the Org: Mentor and guide Senior Product Managers and cross-functional team members, instilling best practices in product management, agile development, and user-centered design.

• Culture Building: Foster a product culture of accountability, technical rigor, and cross-functional collaboration across the organization.

Qualifications

• Experience: 10+ years of product management experience in high-scale software or biotech environments, with a proven track record of operating at a Director-level seniority.

• Zero-to-One Track Record: Demonstrated experience building and launching new software products from the ground up in a startup or internal incubator environment.

• Regulated Industry Expertise: Deep experience in highly regulated environments (e.g., FDA design controls, HIPAA, IEC 62304, or ISO standards). Exposure to HealthTech, MedTech, or genomics is highly advantageous.

• Technical Aptitude: Strong ability to understand complex technical architectures (APIs, microservices, LIMS, Data Platforms, event-driven systems) and communicate effectively with engineering and scientific teams.

• AI-Native Fluency: Hands-on experience using LLMs and generative AI tools to accelerate product workflows, requirements generation, or operational insight.

• Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex ideas and influence executive-level stakeholders.

• Education: BS/MS in a relevant technical, scientific, or quantitative discipline; MBA or equivalent experience is a plus.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• High Agency & Technical Initiative: You are a natural builder who thrives in fluid, fast-moving environments. Rather than waiting for requirements to be handed down, you inspect systems, audit user needs, chart a path forward amid unknowns, and drive product decisions proactively.

• Deep Systems-Level Cognition: You bring expert-level mastery of the system from two dimensions — architectural depth and functional fluency. You can trace how minor changes in upstream services impact downstream clinical reporting, catching product failure modes that only someone who truly knows the system would anticipate.

• Cross-Functional Leadership through Influence: You operate as a central leader without formal authority — driving consensus, alignment, and product excellence across Engineering, R&D, Commercial, and Clinical teams through technical credibility, communication, and emotional intelligence.

• User-Centric Validation Ethos: You understand that technically correct solutions are incomplete if the final product degrades the clinical or laboratory operational experience. You rigorously validate that software delivers on its promise for real users.