Product Manager, Design Technology

What to Expect

Tesla is looking for a highly technical and motivated Product Manager to define Design Technology's vendored-software portfolio — and to test every application in it.

Design Technology owns the commercial and open-source applications Tesla uses to design cars and robots. Accountability is split across product teams, SRE, license analysts, and Support.

This role is systems design, not product coding. You will gather requirements, write them down, assess risk, and verify and validate. An application that is on a list but has never been tested is not in the portfolio — it is an unowned availability, licensing, and security risk. Untested software is what factory line-downs and multi-hour designer outages look like in production.

We are a high-impact team that values curiosity, learning, mentorship, open discourse, and making disciplined decisions by weighing trade-offs. You will participate in on-call, including weekends.

Join us in accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy.

What You’ll Do

• Define the licensed-software portfolio as a system of record. One named list. One owner per application. End the scavenger hunt across disconnected catalogs and monitoring tools
• For every application in that portfolio — not a sample, not the ones that already have a champion — write how Tesla actually uses it, the requirements, the risk if it is wrong or down, and the test that proves it still works
• Execute that test. Cataloguing is the start of the job. Verification and validation of every app in the catalog is the job. CAD, PLM, simulation, and scientific computing tools each get a pass/fail
• Treat the portfolio as one system: requirements, interfaces, and architecture docs so the applications work together the way design actually works, not the way a vendor datasheet describes them
• Identify and assess technical risk per application and per license server. The next disk-full, decommissioned host, or blocked network path should be a test failure caught in V&V, not a factory or designer outage
• Stand up paging and a runbook per license server, and an incident system responders have actually agreed to use
• Put ownership on the product team that owns the problem. This role does not remain the shadow product manager, implementor, and process consultant for every vendor app
• Investigate new applications and new versions the same way: requirements, risk, test, then enroll or kill
• Provide technical leadership across vendors, Support, and design teams. Drive this roadmap to completion instead of letting it get pulled onto the next platform upgrade

What You’ll Bring

• Demonstrated experience with at least 2 of: (1) SRE fundamentals — networking, infrastructure, paging, incident response; (2) vendored / legacy software for manufacturing and design; (3) scientific computing or design tools like MATLAB, NI, or Solid Works; (4) commercial / licensed engineering apps and how they are managed
• Interest or experience in defining a portfolio of applications as a system, then verifying each one — not only operating a single product or owning a simple greenfield domain
• Comfort with requirements management, risk analysis, and verification & validation. You write the test and you run it — with extreme problem-centric (not solution-centric) thinking
• Domain experience is welcome, but not required
• Familiarity with license-server architectures and on-prem Windows / Linux hosts
• Ability to read how designers actually use CATIA, 3DX, MATLAB, NI, and Ansys-class tools and turn that into a testable requirement. Working knowledge of 3DX as Tesla uses it, or the ability to get there fast; this seat is not a first introduction to PLM
• Strong understanding of system design: availability, reliability, interfaces, and the difference between "the vendor says it works" and "we tested it"
• Effective verbal and written communication. Decisions happen in the open
• Ability to navigate uncertainty and loosely defined problem statements
• Five days per week on-site. Participates in on-call, including weekends