Head of Product job description

Product management — Head of Product
Sets product strategy and practice across the organization.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Set how discovery is done across a portfolio of products, and step in when a team is stuck on a framing that is the actual blocker to progress.
- Set the standard for how user evidence is gathered and used across a portfolio, and challenge a decision that was made without it.
- Set the sizing method a portfolio uses to compare investments, and correct a sizing model that has been quietly gamed.
- Set product strategy at the organization level, and decide when the organization's own broader strategy needs to change.
- Set the prioritization approach a whole portfolio uses, and override it in the specific cases where the approach does not fit.
- Decide which products the organization invests in, holds flat or retires, and defend those calls with evidence.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the Group Product Manager level (level 4 of 5) or equivalent
- Holds Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)

REQUIRED SKILLS
Discovery
- Problem Discovery and Framing — You can set how discovery is done across a portfolio of products, and step in when a team is stuck on a framing that is the actual blocker to progress.
- Applying User-Centered Insights — You can set the standard for how user evidence is gathered and used across a portfolio, and challenge a decision that was made without it.
- Opportunity Sizing — You can set the sizing method a portfolio uses to compare investments, and correct a sizing model that has been quietly gamed.
- Competitor and Market Analysis — You can read a crowded or shifting market, say where the product should sit in it and which segments to leave alone, and show leadership which competitor threat is real.
- Customer and Sales Feedback Loops — You can build feedback loops across several channels and get support and sales to trust them, including telling an account team their request will not be built and why. You separate one loud account from a real pattern.

Strategy & Roadmap
- Product Strategy and Vision — You can set product strategy at the organization level, and decide when the organization's own broader strategy needs to change.
- Product Roadmap Prioritization — You can set the prioritization approach a whole portfolio uses, and override it in the specific cases where the approach does not fit.
- Product Life Cycle Management — You can decide which products the organization invests in, holds flat or retires, and defend those calls with evidence. You shut down products other people would keep running out of habit.
- Business Case and ROI Justification — You can set how product investment is judged across the organization and rank competing cases against one another. You kill a well-argued proposal, including one of your own, when the evidence turns against it.
- AI Opportunity and Oversight — You can set the organization's rules for using AI in its products, including where people keep control and when to stop, and hold launches to them.

Product Delivery
- Specification and Acceptance Criteria Writing — You can set the specification standard your team writes to, and rescue a spec that shipped the wrong thing because it was unclear.
- Agile and Lean Delivery Practices — You can set the delivery practice standard across a portfolio, and defend a deliberate exception to it.
- Backlog Refinement and Sprint Facilitation — You can keep a backlog healthy when several teams and dependencies feed it, keep planning useful when priorities move mid-quarter, and spot when a well-groomed backlog targets the wrong outcome.
- Technical Feasibility Collaboration — You can work through feasibility on ambiguous, high-risk work and reshape the product idea until it fits what can actually be built. You take on technical debt deliberately, with the repayment agreed rather than implied.
- Design Collaboration and UX Feedback — You can hold the product line on a hard trade-off between what users want and what the business can carry, and explain the decision so designers can act on it.

Analytics & Growth
- Product Outcomes and Metrics — You can decide what a whole portfolio measures itself by, and change the framework when it no longer reflects the strategy or when teams stop acting on its numbers.
- Experiment Design and Interpretation — You can decide when experimentation is the wrong tool for a decision, and set experimentation policy across a portfolio.

Leadership & GTM
- Pricing and Packaging Input — You can lead a repackaging or pricing change across a product line, coordinating with sales, finance and legal on the transition.
- Launch and Go-to-Market Coordination — You can set the launch standard a portfolio follows, and decide which launches need full coordination and which a lighter process.
- Cross-Functional Stakeholder Alignment — You can set how stakeholder relationships are managed across a portfolio, and personally repair the ones that have broken down.
- Executive and Board Communication — You can shape what leadership believes about the product portfolio over months, not just inside one meeting, and bring your read to executives before they set direction.
- Product Team Leadership and Coaching — You can set how product managers are hired, leveled and developed across the organization. You grow leaders who go on to run teams of their own.
- Cross-Team Portfolio Management — You can decide how investment is split across the portfolio and reshape team boundaries when the strategy changes. You move people away from work you sponsored yourself when the portfolio needs them elsewhere.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can keep several people's work in step across teams, agree priorities and hand-offs with them, and keep one shared task list that all of them actually use.
- Planning & Estimation — You can forecast work and staffing quarters ahead, and set the estimating method other teams use.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can report the organization's most exposed outcomes to its leaders as they stand, including bad news, and answer for them.
- Quality Focus — You can raise the quality bar across the organization by building the tools and habits that make the careful way the easy way.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can crack problems the organization has repeatedly failed to solve, and write up your approach so others can apply it to that kind of problem.
- Domain Expertise — You can influence how the field is practiced beyond this organization, for example through published work, talks or work on shared standards.
- Continuous Learning — You can set what the organization invests its learning time in, and build learning material and practice that teams keep using without you.
- Digital Tools & AI Use — You can decide where AI and automation fit in several teams' work, set the human checks and data rules they follow, and help people adopt the tools safely.

Communication
- Communication — You can set how the organization communicates by creating the forums and norms that teams use to share information.
- Collaboration — You can remove the barriers that stop teams working together by putting in place routines and forums they use across the organization.
- Writing & Documentation — You can set the writing standard the organization works to, and write documents that others can keep current after you move on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can represent the organization in its most important relationships and set how it engages with everyone who depends on it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can set direction for the whole organization and own its riskiest decisions, including the unpopular ones.
- Mentoring — You can shape how the organization grows its people, including how mentors are chosen and supported and how their impact is checked.
- Strategic Thinking — You can shape the organization's strategy, argue for the bets it should make, and review those bets against what happened.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) (required from Product Manager)