Principal Product Manager – Rail Operations & Service Recovery to

Position: Principal Product Manager – Rail Operations & Service Recovery-163863

Location: Washington, DC - Local

Duration: 12 months

Randstad is seeking a senior-level Principal Product Manager – Rail Operations & Service Recovery to join a premier transportation enterprise client headquartered in Washington, DC. In this strategic, high-impact role, you will define, lead, and continuously evolve mission-critical products and operational capabilities supporting Rail Incident Management, Service Recovery, and Disruption Operations. Serving as the vital bridge between rail operations, executive leadership, technology partners, and Agile delivery teams, you will drive product strategy, roadmap prioritization, and value realization to maximize operational resilience, service reliability, and passenger experience across complex, multi-system operational environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Product Strategy & Vision: Define and maintain the multi-year product strategy, vision, roadmap, and key success metrics for enterprise-wide Rail Incident Management and Service Disruption capabilities.
• Stakeholder Partnership: Serve as the primary liaison between rail operations, customer experience teams, technology organizations, and executive leadership to translate complex operational challenges into scalable technology solutions.
• Roadmap & Investment Prioritization: Lead product investment decisions and prioritize feature backlogs based on operational risk, customer impact, business value, and regulatory alignment.
• Cross-Functional Execution: Collaborate closely with Agile/SAFe delivery teams across multiple interdependent workstreams to ensure on-time, high-quality execution of roadmap milestones.
• Governance & Alignment: Establish product decision-making frameworks, manage cross-functional dependencies, and ensure continuous alignment with safety standards, regulatory bodies, and operational policies.
• Discovery & Requirements Definition: Lead discovery initiatives with field personnel and operational control centers to define detailed business requirements, acceptance criteria, and user workflows.
• Performance & Data Analytics: Evaluate product health and operational resilience using data-driven insights, customer feedback, and performance metrics to drive ongoing product optimization.
• Executive Communication: Synthesize strategy, progress, dependencies, risks, and ROI into clear briefings for executive leadership and key operational stakeholders.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Experience Level: 10+ years of progressive product management experience leading complex, mission-critical enterprise solutions (transportation, logistics, or operational platforms strongly preferred).
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Domain & Technical Expertise: Demonstrated experience with incident management systems, service recovery operations, and customer-facing service continuity platforms.
• Agile Leadership: Proven background operating within Agile and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) delivery environments, managing complex cross-team dependencies without direct authority.
• Tooling Proficiency: Advanced proficiency with product management and collaboration tools, including Jira Align, Confluence, Visio, Figma, and Microsoft Office Suite.
• Soft Skills: Exceptional executive presence, strategic thinking, problem-solving, and stakeholder facilitation skills in ambiguous, high-stakes environments.
• Preferred Certifications: Product Management certification (SAFe POPM, Pragmatic Institute, AIPMM, or equivalent) preferred; PMP certification is a plus.