Product Manager

Product Manager

New Product Development | Peoria, IL (In-Person) | Full-Time | 10–20% Travel | Relocation Assistance Provided

Base Salary: $105,000 – $145,000

Variable Compensation: Eligible for Rheo's Product Manager KPI scorecard and bonus plan, tied to the condition and performance of your assigned product families

Every quote Rheo sends and every spec sheet a customer trusts starts with the person who owns the product record. If that level of ownership appeals to you, keep reading.

Rheo builds the powder handling, containment, and single-use equipment that pharmaceutical, biotech, and industrial manufacturers rely on. The portfolio spans roughly eight product groups and thirty product families, and is growing.

We're looking for a Product Manager to be the commercial owner of a set of those product families: holding the data the company quotes from, answering the questions the field asks, and building the picture of where your products win and where they fall short.

What You’ll Do

Own an assigned set of product families, accountable for their maturity, competitiveness, documentation, and commercial readiness to be sold

Drive every assigned product family to the maturity standard: current pricing, a released BOM, validated design documentation, accurate collateral, and correct SharePoint and Epicor records

Author the roadmap sections covering assigned product families (improvement, new-opportunity, and lifecycle recommendations)

Recommend product extensions, standardization opportunities, and retirement candidates, each with a business case behind it

Own the sellable-product data of record in Epicor for assigned product families (MSRP, standard lead time, and stock levels)

Own the estimating methodology as published and applied; CEM and Sales execute estimating within it

Analyze pricing and margin performance for your products and bring the Product Director evidence-backed recommendations on where price and margin should move

Own the currency of the Products SharePoint pages and product collateral for assigned product families, supplying Marketing the technical substance and product claims behind them

Gather and structure customer, field, and Service input into product requirements, maintaining the requirements record that roadmap and NPD decisions are made against

Own the competitive record for assigned product families: a current comparison of competitor products, configurations, pricing posture, lead times, and claims the organization can quote from with confidence

Run win/loss review with CEM and Sales, carrying the findings into the improvement slate and the roadmap

Serve as first-line triage for inbound product questions from Sales, Inside Sales, CEM, and Operations, owning the intake, response commitment, and escalation route

Build and run the product training cadence: a published calendar, sessions delivered to Sales, CEM, PMO, Service, and Operations, refreshed whenever products change or launch

Create and maintain training material (overview decks, application guides, FAQ documents, demonstration protocols) for internal enablement and market-facing education

Act as the change manager for your products: when a released product changes, you're why the rest of the company finds out in time

Lead new product development initiatives inside your own product families, from opportunity and business case through design, validation, and launch, running the project while Design Engineers do the design work

Own launch execution on those initiatives and any new product entering your product families (pricing loaded, BOMs released, marketing ready, systems complete, the sales team enabled), then track performance against the approved case

Draft business cases for opportunities in your product families and take them to review as the person who will run the project if approved

Own Continuous Product Improvement intake for assigned product families: customer-care patterns, win/loss, margin erosion, manufacturing feedback, and field failures

What Success Looks Like

The organization quotes from Rheo's product data with confidence, because it is right, and when it is wrong, this role found it first

Sales, CEM, and Operations know where to take a product question and get a useful answer quickly, and increasingly get it from this role rather than through it

Product changes reach everyone who needs to know, in time, with documentation and training refreshed behind them

The assigned product families move measurably up the maturity curve each quarter

The company has a current, usable picture of what the assigned products compete against and why deals are won and lost, and it visibly shapes what gets built and improved

What We’re Looking For

Experience

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Manufacturing, or Industrial Engineering, Business, or a related field

Three or more years in product management, product marketing, technical sales support, applications engineering, or another product-facing role in a manufacturing environment

Demonstrated ownership of product data, documentation, or configuration records in an ERP or PLM system, at a scale where accuracy mattered to someone other than the person maintaining it

Experience translating customer, field, or sales input into product requirements or documented improvement actions

Experience delivering technical product training or enablement to internal or customer audiences

Experience working across engineering, sales, and operations without direct authority over any of them

Software

Proficiency in Microsoft Office, including building and maintaining analysis in Excel

Working familiarity with an ERP system (Epicor Kinetic preferred) covering pricing, part records, and BOM structures

Proficiency with SharePoint as a content platform

Enough 3D CAD and PDM familiarity (Autodesk Inventor and Vault preferred) to open, read, and interpret product models, drawings, and part records

Traits

Extreme Ownership: takes full accountability for the condition of the assigned products, including the parts nobody asked about

Bias for Accuracy: treats a wrong price or a stale spec sheet as a defect, not a nuisance, and is uncomfortable until it is fixed

Customer Curiosity: wants to know why the customer asked, not just what they asked for

Commercial Instinct: understands the intersection of price, cost, margin, and positioning, and is growing toward owning it

Organized Under Volume: holds a full set of assigned product families, a training calendar, a change queue, and an inbound triage line without dropping any of them

Values Alignment

Initiative: instinct for taking action to improve, solve, and deliver.

Collaboration: proactive communication with your stakeholders.

Competence: ability to do your job well.

Reliability: persistent follow-through on commitments.

Bold Humility: courage to speak, act, and listen without arrogance.

Preferred Qualifications

Pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment, powder handling systems, or containment technology

Single-use technology or consumable product lines

GMP or otherwise regulated manufacturing, including change control and customer qualification

A stage-gate or comparable structured new product development process

Competitive analysis, pricing analysis, or win/loss review

Why Rheo

Privately owned and operated for 30 years and counting

A smaller team (roughly 100 people) with a strong, in-person work culture

Vertically integrated: see the products you manage built in the same building

Equipment that contributes directly to pharmaceutical manufacturing

Ownership visibility from concept through production

A growing company in a stable, regulated industry where precision and accuracy matter

Excellent benefits (see section below)

Benefits

Leading medical insurance — consistently low rates compared to other businesses in