About the Role
We are seeking an experienced Product Lead SMS to own the strategy, roadmap, commercial success, and platform evolution of our SMS business within a CPaaS ecosystem. This role requires deep expertise in enterprise messaging, carrier connectivity, SMS routing, regulatory compliance, deliverability, pricing, and monetization.
The ideal candidate will have significant experience building and scaling SMS products at leading CPaaS, telecom messaging, or communications technology companies or major telecom messaging providers.
This is a highly strategic role requiring a combination of product leadership, messaging domain expertise, commercial acumen, and strong stakeholder management capabilities.
Key Responsibilities
Product Strategy & Ownership
- Define and execute the SMS product vision, roadmap, and growth strategy.
- Own the end-to-end SMS portfolio, including:
- Transactional SMS
- Promotional SMS
- OTP and authentication messaging
- International A2P messaging
- Domestic messaging
- Enterprise messaging solutions
- Drive platform differentiation through reliability, routing intelligence, deliverability optimization, and customer experience.
- Develop long-term strategy around SMS evolution alongside RCS, WhatsApp, and omnichannel messaging.
Carrier & Ecosystem Management
- Build deep understanding of telecom operator ecosystems and messaging regulations across key markets.
- Support internal teams with carriers, aggregators, and connectivity to optimize:
- Delivery rates
- Route quality
- Cost efficiency
- Throughput
- Network coverage
- Evaluate direct-connect versus aggregator strategies.
Platform & Technology Leadership
- Drive development of:
- SMS APIs
- Messaging orchestration capabilities
- Routing engines
- Delivery intelligence
- Number management
- Sender ID management
- Analytics and reporting
- Define platform requirements for scalability, resilience, observability, and performance.
Commercial Ownership
- Own business KPIs including:
- Revenue growth
- Gross margin
- Traffic growth
- Customer adoption
- Delivery success rates
- Develop pricing models and monetization strategies.
- Identify new revenue opportunities across enterprise and digital-native customer segments.
Regulatory & Compliance Leadership
- Ensure compliance with regional messaging regulations including:
- DLT, ACMA, IMDA and similar ecosystems
- Sender registration frameworks
- Spam prevention requirements
- Carrier policies
- Privacy regulations
- Work closely with legal, compliance, and operations teams.
Customer & Market Engagement
- Engage directly with strategic enterprise customers.
- Gather market intelligence and competitive insights.
- Translate customer needs into product requirements.
- Support sales teams in strategic opportunities and customer presentations.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Lead collaboration across:
- Engineering
- Operations
- Carrier Relations
- Revenue Management
- Sales
- Marketing
- Customer Success
- Drive execution from concept through launch and adoption.
Required Qualifications
Experience
- 1015+ years of experience in Product Management, with at least:
- 5+ years focused on SMS, messaging, CPaaS, telecom APIs, or enterprise communications.
- Proven experience owning SMS or messaging products at leading CPaaS, messaging, telecom, or communications technology companies.
- Demonstrated success managing large-scale messaging platforms handling high transaction volumes.
Domain Expertise
Strong knowledge of:
- SMS ecosystem architecture
- A2P messaging
- OTP platforms
- International messaging
- SMS routing and aggregation
- Carrier interconnects
- SMPP protocols
- Messaging APIs
- DLT frameworks
- Sender IDs
- Number provisioning
- Messaging fraud prevention
- Deliverability optimization
- Traffic monetization
Product Management Skills
- Product strategy
- Roadmap development
- Business case creation
- KPI ownership
- Pricing and packaging
- Go-to-market execution
- Data-driven decision making
Technical Understanding
Strong understanding of:
- APIs and developer platforms
- Messaging infrastructure
- Cloud-native platforms
- Distributed systems
- Analytics and observability tools
- Telecom messaging protocols
Ideal Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate:
- Is recognized as an SMS and messaging domain expert.
- Understands carrier economics and messaging monetization.
- Has launched and scaled messaging products globally.
- Can balance customer needs, commercial outcomes, and technical feasibility.
- Is comfortable engaging with telecom operators, enterprise CIOs, product leaders, and engineering teams.
- Has managed products with billions of annual message transactions.
- Brings strong industry relationships across operators, aggregators, and enterprise messaging ecosystems.
Success Metrics (First 12 Months)
- Increase SMS revenue and gross margin.
- Improve message delivery success rates and route quality.
- Launch key platform enhancements and APIs.
- Expand carrier connectivity and coverage.
- Reduce operational costs.
- Improve customer adoption and retention.
- Establish a clear roadmap for SMS and next-generation messaging services.
