Director – Head of Product Operations

🚀 Your Role:

We are seeking an experienced Director, Head of Product Operations to act as a key strategic and operational partner to the Chief Product Officer (CPO). This role spans the full range from strategy to execution - helping shape where the Product organisation is going, while owning the operational machine that gets it there. You will drive the effectiveness, alignment, and performance of the Product organisation, using data, insight, and increasingly AI-enabled tooling to keep that machine running smoothly as we scale.

This is a dual strategy-and-operations role. You will help shape product strategy and portfolio direction alongside the CPO, while also owning the operational infrastructure that turns that strategy into results - managing the product portfolio, driving delivery, preparing board and executive materials, shaping the roadmap, allocating resource and budget, and contributing to pricing decisions. The role rests on three pillars: business and data insights, customer and market insights, and process and governance. If the Product Operating Model is the blueprint for how Xceptor creates and delivers product value, this role keeps the building systems running - ensuring product teams are aligned, prioritised effectively, and equipped to deliver high-quality outcomes at scale.

🎯 Who we're looking for:

We’re looking for a senior product leader who combines strategic and operational strengths, with a track record of building effective operating models and managing complex portfolios.

Product & Delivery Leadership

• 15 years’ experience in Product, Product Operations, or related roles, including prior product leadership experience (e.g. former Head of Product, VP Product, or Product Director).
• A blend of management consulting and in-house product experience is strongly preferred - someone equally comfortable structuring strategic problems and rolling up their sleeves to run delivery.
• Strong experience designing and scaling product operating models and governance.

Product & Operating Model Expertise

• Deep understanding of product management practices.
• Experience implementing planning, prioritisation, and governance frameworks.
• Experience managing a product portfolio, including roadmap planning, resource allocation, and board-level reporting.
• Experience building or scaling the core pillars of product operations - business and data insight, customer and market insight, and process and governance.

Data & Performance Orientation

• Experience defining and tracking product KPIs.
• Strong analytical capability and data-driven decision making.
• Experience connecting commercial or financial metrics to product delivery data to inform prioritisation.
• Exposure to pricing strategy or commercial decision-making is a plus.

Cross-functional Leadership

• Ability to influence across product, engineering, and business and drive transformation in an organisation.
• Strong stakeholder management in complex environments, including experience preparing materials for and presenting to boards or senior leadership.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional launch or go-to-market readiness processes.

Execution Excellence

• Strong organisational and operational discipline.
• Ability to deliver initiatives from concept through execution and drive new ways of working.

Leadership & Team Development

• Experience leading and developing a high-performing team.
• Ability to build clarity, alignment, and accountability across teams in ambiguous, fast-evolving environments.

🧩 What You’ll Be Doing:

Product Strategy, Operating Model & Governance

• Partner with the CPO to translate strategic priorities into an operating model, planning cadence, and governance structure that enables effective execution.
• Lead the definition and evolution of the product operating model - including structure, decision rights, and ways of working - establishing scalable planning, prioritisation, and delivery frameworks.
• Define governance structures and decision-making processes, including cross-functional rituals such as quarterly/PI planning, OKR-setting, and business reviews, that drive alignment, accountability, and strategic outcomes across the organisation.
• Ensure the operating model reflects the regulatory and risk environment in which Xceptor operates, embedding appropriate compliance and control considerations into product governance.

Portfolio Management, Roadmap & Resource Allocation

• Own the day-to-day management of the product portfolio in partnership with the CPO, ensuring investment, roadmap, and resourcing decisions are aligned to business strategy and organisational objectives.
• Lead roadmap planning and prioritisation processes across the product function, balancing strategic bets, run-the-business work, and customer commitments.
• Drive resource allocation across product teams, ensuring capacity is aligned to priority and rebalanced as priorities shift.
• Provide executive-level transparency and visibility into priorities, trade-offs, progress, and outcomes.

Business & Data Insights

• Establish and oversee a product performance framework, defining KPIs and success measures that drive accountability and value creation.
• Connect commercial and financial metrics - revenue, retention, cost-to-serve - to product delivery data, enabling prioritisation decisions to be grounded in business outcomes, not just output.
• Deliver meaningful reporting and insights on progress, risks, performance, and impact to support strategic decision-making and continuous improvement.
• Act as steward of product data definitions and dashboards, ensuring metrics are consistent, trusted, and understood the same way across Product, Engineering, and the business.

Customer & Market Insights

• Build the mechanisms that bring customer feedback, sales and support insights, win/loss data, and user research into a structured input for roadmap and portfolio decisions as part of the product management operating system.
• Ensure product teams stay close to customers and the market as the organisation scales, preventing insight from being siloed in individual teams or lost in unread reports.Coordinate competitive and market intelligence gathering and testing with product marketing to inform strategic planning and positioning.

Delivery Oversight & ELT Reporting

• Oversee delivery tracking and governance across the product portfolio, identifying risks and driving corrective action to keep roadmap commitments on track.
• Own the preparation of board and executive materials on product strategy, portfolio performance, and delivery, acting as a trusted right hand to the CPO in board and leadership forums.
• Ensure a consistent, high-quality reporting cadence across the product organisation, from team level up to the board.

Launch & Go-to-Market Readiness

• Own the cross-functional launch readiness process, coordinating Product, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success to ensure new products and features land successfully in the market.
• Identify and close operational gaps between “built” and “launched”, ensuring go-to-market teams and product teams operate from the same priorities and timelines.

Pricing & Commercial Input

• Partner with Product, Finance, and Commercial leadership on pricing strategy and frameworks, ensuring pricing decisions are informed by portfolio priorities and value delivered.
• Support the CPO in connecting pricing, packaging, and commercial considerations into roadmap and portfolio planning.

Strategic Alignment and Execution Leadership

• Drive alignment across Product, Engineering, and business functions to ensure successful delivery against strategic priorities.
• Navigate complex dependencies, remove organisational barriers, and facilitate effective coordination across teams, domains, and leadership stakeholders.

Product Enablement, AI Tooling & Knowledge Management

• Champion the development and adoption of product management tools, frameworks, playbooks, and best practices building with AI.
• Maintain a single source of truth for product documentation, ways of working, and onboarding materials, so new and existing Product Managers can ramp quickly and consistently.
• Drive initiatives that strengthen product capability, support organisational maturity, and establish consistent standards of excellence across the product function.
• Explore and pilot AI-enabled automation for reporting, insight synthesis, and other operational workflows to keep the product operations function efficient as it scales.

CPO Office, Strategy and Transformation

• Be a trusted partner to the CPO, leading strategic initiatives and driving execution against key organisational priorities.
• Support executive planning, communications, and stakeholder engagement, while delivering cross-functional programmes that enhance the effectiveness and impact of the product organisation.

People Leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing Product Operations team.
• Create a culture of collaboration, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Establish clear objectives, development plans, and career pathways for team members.
• Drive workforce planning, succession planning, recruitment, and capability development across the function.

🌍 Diversity & Inclusion at Xceptor

We believe great ideas come from everywhere — and that the best teams are made up of people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. At Xceptor, we’re committed to building a workplace where everyone feels welcome, valued, and empowered to be themselves.

We know that not everyone ticks every single box in a job description — and that’s okay. If you’re excited about this role and think you could make a difference, we’d love to hear from you. Your unique skills and experiences might be just what we need, even if you don’t meet every requirement.

We celebrate diversity and are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment for all employees — regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or background.

🌗 Hybrid at Xceptor