Product Operations Lead

The Product Operations Lead owns the product and portfolio operating model: the frameworks, cadences and standards that connect strategy, product planning, prioritisation and portfolio governance. The role leads a team of Product Operations Managers and is accountable for the quality, consistency and transparency of how work flows into and out of Product & Technology.

• Own the product and portfolio operating model. Set the direction for how Product & Technology plans, prioritises and reviews: strategy and planning cadences, prioritisation and portfolio governance, decision rights, portfolio-level dependency visibility, and the quality standards the model runs on.
• Safeguard the quality of work entering delivery. Define what a ready opportunity looks like and hold that standard: the problem is well understood, the evidence supports the opportunity, success measures are defined, and dependencies and ownership are clear. T
• Lead and develop the team. Give the Product Operations Managers a clear remit and the space to own it. Coach them in the craft of their discipline, help them see the system they work inside, and build their careers deliberately.
• Deliver improvements directly. This is a hands-on role. Alongside setting direction, design and land changes personally: intake routes, planning cadences that fit how teams work, tooling standards in the Atlassian suite, portfolio views that leadership trusts.
• Contribute to P&T Operations as a leadership team. Partner with the leads of Delivery Operations and Technical Program Management so the three systems reinforce each other, holding the boundaries between them and applying the principle that systems are improved before coordination is added.
• Make value visible. Ensure delivered outcomes are measured consistently, communicated clearly across the business, and fed back into the next planning cycle.

• A background in product or technology operations within SaaS, including designing and running planning and portfolio models at organisational scale.
• A track record of building planning, governance or prioritisation systems that outlasted their own involvement in them.
• Confidence using data to describe the health of an operating system and to make the case for change.
• Systems thinking paired with the ability to work in the detail. Able to see where the operating model is straining before anyone raises it, and equally able to sit with one team, one broken handover or one badly shaped ticket and fix it.
• A strong sense of craft and quality. Not only designing how work flows, but raising the quality of what flows through it, and able to articulate what good looks like without turning it into a compliance exercise.
• Hands-on leadership. Gives direction, coaches people through their own decisions rather than making decisions for them, and still picks up the work when it needs picking up.
• Pragmatism about method, and clear communication in writing and in a room, including making complex topics simple enough for stakeholders outside Product & Technology to act on.