Senior Director, Product Operations

The Senior Director, Product Operations will lead the Product Operations function supporting the Product Management and Engineering organization to ensure successful and holistic operational delivery across all products. The role will act as the bridge between strategic initiatives and tactical delivery and is responsible for program management across all products. This is a leadership role, working with the product managers and delivery teams to drive planning, reporting and execution activities. The role will be responsible for continuous process improvements, including coaching teams and individuals as required to increase team productivity. The focus is on building autonomous, motivated teams that work seamlessly together to deliver the best value to the customer. 

What You’ll Do: 

• Effectively manage the product portfolio of initiatives, partnering with product managers and delivery teams to deliver solutions to the market. 
• Lead program planning activities, ensuring the delivery teams deliver against commitments with the highest quality deliverables in a timely fashion.
• Establish and manage stakeholder expectations through-out the software delivery lifecycle; Inspect and show progress against release plans.
• Oversee and ensure all program management artefacts are compiled and completed in a timely fashion, so that stakeholders can ‘pull’ activity status to limit the need for ‘push’ type meetings/email updates.
• Work with teams to identify risks and issues impacting release plans. Act as an escalation point and provide direction to bring plans back on track.
• Establish process frameworks for managing the flow of work from strategic business requirements to tactical delivery of ‘done’.
• Assess existing processes and identify opportunities for improvement; use project management industry expertise and collaboration skills to improve ways of working within the software delivery lifecycle and help teams improve productivity; provide process coaching and implement change management as necessary.
• Ensure that teams have access to the best project and product management tools; set up policies and frameworks for efficient and effective use of the tools.
• Ensure that teams and team members understand their roles and responsibilities and commit to their team contracts.
• Line manage Product Operations employees to support them in their role and career development.
• Define/oversee a communication plan to ensure appropriate stakeholder involvement and communication is in place across all levels to delivery; this includes repository tool management for any shared collaboration artefacts.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and other stakeholders to manage key performance metrics.
• Assist with team budget management; manage department budgets for the Product Operation teams.
• Be actively involved in quarterly/yearly roadmap and capacity planning.
• Participate in other related activities, as requested. 

Who You Are: 

• An owner: you can seamlessly straddle thinking about both the product and the business and are equally comfortable talking about funnel metrics and P+Ls. You look to own and drive outcomes - you find ways to build impact and wins. 
• Biased for action: you make good decisions with incomplete data and are constantly optimizing for learning 
• Data-fluent: you use data to solve problems, identify opportunities, and are capable of inventing and using new metrics in order to learn and make decisions 
• A team builder: you are excited by the chance to build a diverse, well-rounded team of high performing product owners. 
• A strategic thinker: you can look across your portfolio of products and the business and are able to come up with a strategy that will drive toward key business product goals.
• A strong communicator: you are effective at communicating the strategy and the “how we get there” at varying levels - executive, cross-functional teams, and to your team. Teammates know what you’re focused on and why it matters.
• A bar raiser: you inspire others to bring their ‘A’ game and are constantly looking for opportunities for improvement. You don’t accept “because that is the way we’ve always done it".
• Fiercely competitive: you operate with a sense of urgency, creativity, and curiosity for how we can improve the lives of our customers and our pros. You aren’t easily knocked down 

What You Bring:

• 10+ years of experience in product management delivery, and 8+ years leading high-performance teams in fast-paced, digitally native organizations.
• Experience managing and coaching teams; a passion for creating an environment where creative solutions are nurtured. 
• A track record of innovating on behalf of customers. 
• Ability to weigh competing priorities, manage tradeoffs and evaluate opportunistic ideas, driving pragmatic decision making while maintaining a clear focus on overarching business priorities. 
• Strong ability to collaborate across functions and levels, seamlessly juggling the priorities of multiple stakeholders. 
• Superior communication skills: you communicate clearly and concisely, including with senior leadership, and can tailor your message to your audience. 
• Highly experienced in Agile software development (SCRUM).