Consulting Manager - Product & Service Innovation (all genders)

As a consultant in Zühlke’s Digital Consulting Practice, you shape the future of products and businesses for leading clients. You combine product development expertise with strategic business insight to navigate complex challenges and drive change from idea to implementation. You work across disciplines, building trusted relationships and guiding executives, engineers, and delivery teams. Your impact spans product strategy, lifecycle management, and the transformation of development organisations to enable sustainable growth. This role offers meaningful work at scale in a collaborative, innovation-driven culture.

• Profit share scheme
• Flexible working hours
• Work from home up to three days per week
• Global and diverse Zühlke community
• Committed to development and skills growth
• Safe and healthy workplace

• Lead client engagements in product strategy, management, technology innovation, and business transformation
• Drive new business models, digital services, and data-driven value propositions
• Translate market, user, and business insights into visions, roadmaps, and investment decisions
• Guide clients through ideation, business case development, market launch, and product evolution
• Support the development of innovative digital, connected, and cyber-physical products as trusted advisor and programme lead
• Assess, design, and optimise product development processes for digital, physical, and cyber-physical products
• Improve product operating models, governance, portfolio management, and ways of working
• Collaborate with executives, product managers, engineers, designers, architects, and delivery teams to align goals with execution
• Build long-term client relationships and shape consulting opportunities from first conversation to delivery

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience
• At least 4 years of professional experience combining consulting and industry exposure
• Proven experience in product development, product management, R&D, or innovation management
• Strong understanding of modern product development approaches (Agile, SAFe, Stage-Gate, Design Thinking, Lean Product Development, or ODI)
• Experience interfacing business, product, technology, and engineering
• Deep understanding of product lifecycle from launch to evolution
• Excellent stakeholder management and facilitation across organisational levels
• Strong analytical thinking and pragmatic problem-solving
• Excellent communication and presentation skills for executives and delivery teams
• Proactive, entrepreneurial mindset with ownership and initiative
• Fluent German and English (spoken & written)

• Stakeholder management
• Facilitation
• Proactive mindset
• Agile
• SAFe
• Stage-Gate