Director of Product

Full-Time Anywhere

Hi, I’m Colin, CEO of Customer.io.  Before starting Customer.io I was a Product Manager. After 5 years of wearing the product hat, I’m firing myself (just from product. I’ll still be CEO). I’m looking to pass the hat on to someone new – maybe you?

What does the hat entail?

You should already have led teams and get satisfaction by seeing your direct reports do great work. However, you’re not so consumed by your pantsuit that you can’t roll up your sleeves and do work alongside them, leading by example. You look at the world around you and see things that could be better. You might see norman doors, or get driven crazy by flawed password reset processes, or wonder why airlines all load passengers in inefficient ways. You’ve likely had a big vision for a product on more than one occasion but can also imagine adopting and improving on a vision you’ll get from someone else (me in this example).

You’re a critical hire for our young company of 30 people and if you’re successful, together we’ll turn our thousand pretty happy customers in to ten thousand ecstatic customers.

If this looks interesting to you, read on below for the rest of the job post.

– Colin, CEO (and soon to be former product lead) of Customer.io


At Customer.io our mission is to help businesses talk like people.

Today we do that through our behavioral messaging platform that empowers internet businesses to send tailored email (and other types of messages), based on what users are (or aren’t) doing in their product, at scale.

We’re a product company: everyone in the company, regardless of their role, cares about the product. You’ll be in the most visible and apparent position in the company, working with a necessarily complex product like Customer.io.

As our Director of Product, your stakeholders are: Alisdair, Bill, Brandi, Colin, Dan, Devin, Ian, Ivana, Janet, Jatin, Jesse, Joe, Jóhann, John, Julie, Justin, Kate, Livia, Matt, Matthew, Mitchell, Najwa, Rachel, Sonja, Stephen, Wendy, and Wiley + our thousands of customers and the people who use us in their companies.

You’ll do great work here by formalizing a process to gather feedback from our customers, digest feedback from our sales, technical support teams, and our founders (Colin & John). Our Director of Product will make sense of the complexity in the world of our customers by leading, deciding, and implementing on product work. Our customers want to communicate to their users in complex ways. You’ll simplify this for them.

We’ve done a lot of hard work scaling up our product’s infrastructure to support more and more customers and their users; infrastructure restrictions have historically dictated  what we get to work on – we’re now able to start focusing on what changes are most impactful for customers. Colin has acted as Product Leader since the beginning, but as his responsibilities scale, so too, will our leadership on the product team.

 

What you can expect to dig into after starting:

  • Work with CEO and CTO to maintain a living roadmap that communicates to the team what we’re planning to work on within different time horizons.
  • Create an active customer advisory board
  • Refine and formalize our product development process – we’ve had good success with cycles a la basecamp, but we’re open to other ways that produce great results
  • Recruit and hire for your team; nurture both the existing and future people on the product team.
  • Work closely with Technical Support and Sales teams to better understand how we can effectively serve our customers.

 

You’ll be effective if you:

  • You have strong opinions, weakly held. You’re ok being wrong in the face of contradicting evidence.
  • You’re radically candid and can both deliver and take feedback from others.
  • You’re deliberate, seeking out and consuming information from multiple sources before making a decision. However, if time is of the essence, you’re ok going with your gut.
  • You can break BIG problems down into a smaller plan to execute against. You look for ways to work smarter, not harder.
  • You put people first and consider the jobs to be done in the product experiences you seek to create.
  • Communicate exceptionally – clear, effective, and proactive communication, especially written communication (write like you talk!), is vital to be successful in a distributed team. You strive to be articulate and empathetic in your interactions and you believe in “working out loud” – sharing your thoughts early and often.

 

We’re looking for you if you*…

  • Have experience managing people, ideally on product teams.
  • Have worked on teams building software with frequent releases in an agile or similar process.
  • Have experience working in a distributed team / company
  • Have product management experience working with a complex product, as a key decision maker.
  • Have experience creating and running a customer advisory board
  • Have knowledge and experience with the tools used to build modern, user-centric products e.g. user research, user testing, prototyping.

*Nobody’s perfect. If you almost match all of the things above we still want to hear from you.

Bonus! Not a requirement, but shout about it if you have experience with…

  • SaaS industry experience
  • Marketing technology experience
  • Ability to express yourself visually

Your success on the team will be measured by:

  • How innovative the work is that we’re shipping to production
  • How well received the work is that we’re shipping to production.
  • How deep your understanding of the space and problem we’re trying to solve is is.
  • How well your direct reports are performing in their roles.
  • How happy the internal teams that are customers of product are.

 

Why should you work with Customer.io?

Work at our head office in Portland, OR or anywhere in the US or Canada. We want to enable you to do your best work, and this is how we aim to do that—

Competitive salary – We’re offering $110,000 – $125,000 USD for a Director in this position in the company depending on experience. We’re also open to more senior positions and compensation for the right person.

Equity – You’ll own a piece of the company. It’s not a get-rich-quick deal, but if you stay around for a while, we’re planning to be a long-lasting company and your piece of it may be a nice bonus.

Big Impact – Our team is small, but growing quickly. The work you do will materially impact how successful we are as a company.

Great Tools – Everyone in the company has a budget for a computer, a motorized standing desk, Steelcase Leap office chair, external monitor, and anything else you’d like to get your job done.

Health Benefits – We pay 100% of your premiums for medical, dental and vision.

Paid family leave – Including adoption.

Retreats – We get our whole company together once a year. We’ve had retreats in Barcelona, Romania, and Hunter Mountain, NY. We’re going to Iceland in September!

Vacation – Rest and recuperation is important. We offer unlimited paid time off with a 2-week minimum per year.

 

At Customer.io, we’re committed to building a diverse environment, and encourage minority applicants. So far, we have team members in France, Germany, Canada, and all over the US. Our CEO and CTO grew up in Singapore and Arkansas respectively, but met in New York City. Our company culture is always evolving; people from different backgrounds bring valued perspective and thoughtfulness to the work that we do and the culture we foster.

Customer.io provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Customer.io complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. Basically, we follow the law, but also like you for who you are!

 

Tagged as: Remote