VP of Product

About MOO

MOO is a multi-award-winning technology, design & print company. We’re passionate about making great design accessible to all.

We pride ourselves on providing amazing quality print products and a fantastic customer experience for everyone, everywhere.

Founded in 2006, we’ve grown a lot since then and the total team is well above 400 people in 6 locations across UK & US. Our multi-disciplinary product teams work together in our beautiful design centric offices in Farringdon, London.

Along with the encouragement to really “be yourself at work”, great roles and opportunities to grow in your specialism & career, we offer comprehensive benefits including matched pension, paid parental leave, 25 days holiday rising to 30 through tenure, private healthcare insurance, life insurance, season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme and an ice cream fridge stocked with at least 4 flavours of Magnum and more cake than you’ve ever seen.

 

Role

Based in London, the VP Product will have overall responsibility for MOO’s software product roadmap strategy and execution as well as leading the product management team. In particular, they will be charged with helping shape, and delivering against, MOO’s ambitious plans, and overseeing the creation of the next suite of world-beating products.

The role of VP Product is quintessentially a leadership one. The VP Product will be an inspiring and impactful executive and leader, charged with building world-class product delivery capabilities, representing Product on the executive team, and ensuring that the product function becomes a high-performance engine for growth.

The Product team, whilst high-calibre and engaged, has a range of experience levels and strengths, and it will be key that the VP Product is both a passionate and skilled mentor and coach. They will ensure that all product managers are trained and actively mentored on best practices and approaches (Agile discovery, OKR setting, execution mentorship, etc.) and build and deliver robust ongoing learning and development plans. They will design and implement robust and scalable KPIs, systems, processes, structures, engender transparency, accountability and a passion to deliver exceptional quality products, and create a culture of ownership and innovation. They will challenge, and enable, their team to excel, setting the highest standards in hiring, training and development, retention and employee satisfaction.

The successful candidate will be expected, over time, to strengthen their team, and will have considerable freedom to reshape or restructure it as appropriate.

In parallel, the VP Product will optimise resource allocation across the various product lines; build and implement a highly-effective ownership and delivery model; and work hand in glove with the Technology organisation to continually improve the quality and output of each squad.

The VP Product will be the customer champion, and ensure that customer-centricity permeates the Product organisation. They will be a close and collaborative partner to the UX team, and ensure that the relationships between Product and Marketing are strong and effective. They will actively solicit feedback from both customers and non-customers, and gather and synthesise data and insights from these conversations, as well as all other relevant customer data, to prioritise product themes and initiatives. They will also support the market and sales teams in crafting and communicating value to customers.  

Given the central role that Product plays at MOO, the successful candidate will need to quickly establish trust and respect with the senior leadership, and actively contribute to executive decision-making across all areas of product strategy and product management. More broadly, they will be seen by the board and executive leadership team, and indeed the entire MOO organisation, as a deeply credible and trusted figure, and a key asset for the company.

This is a rare opportunity to play a key role in a truly complex, full service product space (including optimisation, ecommerce, web apps, custom physical product and fulfilment, B2B and B2C), and make a huge impact on a company that is revolutionising a global industry.          

Profile Overview

The successful candidate will be an outstanding product leader, who brings a proven track record of success within innovative digital businesses, navigating through high-growth, building scalable systems, processes and technologies, and delivering products of exceptional quality.

With a strong design sensibility, they will be an inspiring leader and communicator, capable of articulating and presenting a clear and compelling vision. They will have a proven track record in attracting, recruiting, managing and developing outstanding talent, and will also be highly effective at cross-functional stakeholder management. They will be a strong and credible contributor to executive team decision-making.

Summary of required experience & attributes

  • YOU STRIVE TO MAKE IT BETTER: You love taking things apart, putting them back together, debating features, making things better, and convincing your friends and family to buy this versus that. You aren’t satisfied until you know how something works and are intrigued by juicy product problems in search of elegant, simple solutions.
  • YOU ARE A LEADER: You are an outstanding leader, coach, and mentor, with the ability to both motivate and upskill the product team. You have a track record of building high-performance and customer-centric product capabilities. You ensure that your teams perform to their utmost ability and encourage a culture of continuous improvement. You will have the credibility and expertise to quickly gain the trust of your team as well as the wider organisation.
  • YOU ARE A STORYTELLER AND FACILITATOR: You will be a proactive and effective communicator and influencer across all levels of the company, building strong relationships with the UX, sales, marketing and technology groups, gaining the necessary insights to determine product priorities. You are skilled at effectively translating broader product vision into quantifiable targets, objectives and key results.
  • YOU ARE OUTCOME DRIVEN: You measure success on results, not simply delivery. MOO.com is our primary channel for our customers and must engender our brand values, meet the needs of our users / customers and deliver on our business objectives.  You will define and manage the appropriate KPIs to ensure the product teams are consistently improving the performance of our platform to meet all of the above goals.  
  • YOU ARE A MAKER: Your perfect week might include coaching a team member on how to facilitate a user story mapping session, discussing the difference between sustaining innovation and new growth innovation with the CEO at the coffee machine, deep diving for insights in your analytics dashboard, presenting monthly performance update at all-hands (in form of Pecha-Kucha) and finally celebrating the week’s wins over cake (and libations) with the squads. You have a proven track-record of successful delivery and execution, building high-quality multi-device experiences across the entirety of the end-to-end user journey. You are a true ‘practitioner’ of product management as a discipline. You have particular experience of ecommerce / transactional models or apps. You have led teams in framing and solving hard problems, and driven efforts that uncovered new value with new kinds of experiences. You have shipped something outstanding.
  • YOU ARE CUSTOMER CURIOUS: Actionable customer insights make you incredibly happy. You value user research and actively search out opportunities to understand customer needs for both quick wins and the basis of innovation (and love sharing the stories). You are passionate about thinking ‘customer-first’ and building easy-to-use products that delight users while driving value to the business. Although not necessarily from a UX / Design background, you have an inherent understanding of user-centred methods and will be able to collaborate closely with experience designers and researchers.
  • YOU ARE A SCIENTIST: For you, scientific method and iteration are a way of life. You naturally develop hypotheses and test them rigorously even with things like making the perfect omelette for breakfast (it takes lots of practice). You are structured, analytical and data-driven, able to define and articulate a clear strategy and ensure that it is implemented effectively at all levels and across multiple markets. You take a logical, fact-based approach to strategic decision-making. You are technology-literate, and comfortable debating the product and technology roadmap with the CPO and CTO.
  • YOU SHARE OUR VALUES – You embody MOO’s culture and passionate about helping us achieve our mission. You are down to earth, open, honest, humble, impactful, innovative, curious, and customer-centric with a passion for good design. You are an excellent communicator. You have good taste!
  • YOU AREN’T EASILY LABELED: Your path to leading Product teams may not be a straight one. Maybe at heart you’re an engineer who found a calling in innovation frameworks and behavioural psychology, or an MBA who builds drones in your garden, or a designer by trade who founded and built a start-up from zero to one, or a gregarious YouTube star with an inventive streak (we already have one of those).

Core Competencies

OK. You may be saying now “That all sounds grand, but hey, I’m a Product person and I want some pragmatic requirements.” So, please find a summary of the competencies what we’ll be expecting if you are up to throwing your hat in the ring.

Strategy, Commercials & Analytics

  • Structured, analytical and data-driven, able to articulate a clear strategy and ensure that it is implemented effectively at all levels
  • Opportunity assessment – Has identified market opportunities, built new propositions/business case, and drive decisions on competing priorities.
  • Trading – Specific eCommerce domain experience Or KPI driven decision making and examples of successfully moving said KPIs
  • Technology-literate and comfortable debating the product and technology roadmap at C-Level.

Soft Skills: Facilitator, Communicator and Stakeholder Management

  • Conflict management – Can share specific conflicts with stakeholders and how they resolved
  • Confidence and swagger –  A confident speaker in small and large groups
  • Facilitation – Illustrated experience with strategic work sessions (i.e. game storming, user story mapping). Runs a great meeting. Shows active listening skills, can think “on their feet” at the white board.
  • Comms Quality – Portfolio and process examples are succinct, thoughtful, and show attention to detail

People Manager & Leadership: An outstanding leader and mentor with the ability to both motivate and up skill the team

  • Track record of building high-performance and customer-centric product capabilities. Has lead teams in framing and solving hard problems.
  • Strong opinions and a philosophy/mindset on how a Product team approaches its work. Will establish the organizational structure, defining roles, and development plans for managers and principle product managers
  • Leads via empowerment, purpose, framing problems and enable PM autonomy versus micro-management. 
  • Managed a team of 5+ Product Managers across multiple crews/squads
  • Bonus points for thought leadership and a strong network within the Product community

Achievements & Core Skills: Shipped something outstanding with agile teams

  • Roughly 10-15 years experience in product development in some form. Doesn’t have to all be in a traditional “product manager” role. Could have been a developer, designer, project manager, analyst to start. 
  • Proven experience “in the trenches” running cross-discipline agile teams as a product owner. Can share as part of a portfolio of achievements.
  • Has driven innovative efforts that uncovered new value with new kinds of experiences
  • Bonus for varied experiences in different markets, devices, and size of businesses

Customers: User-Centred Product Development

  • Customers are at the centre of their product strategy (i.e. not just driven from HIPPO or MBA frameworks). Have used or overseen the use of personas, jobs to be done or user story mapping as a tool in product planning. 
  • Specific examples of where Qualitative user research informed or evolved a product. Can share specific examples user-centric product development (prototyping, iteration, has managed or driven usability testing)
  • Has worked closely and successfully with a mature UX team and integrated into agile process
  • Can describe examples of customer segmentation models and impact on product strategy  

Share our Values

  • Can live MOO’s MAKEIT values: Make it Simpler, Always delivery Delight; Keep it human; Every Detail counts; Imagine it better; Tackle it together 
  • Has used our product prior to interviewing and has strong opinions on how the experience can be improved. Illustrates a keen interest or passion for MOO’s brand, products and problems. 
  • Possesses a positive, enthusiastic demeanour, and sense of humour  
  • Enjoys cake in its various forms.  

Diverse teams build better products

We strongly believe that diversity of experience, perspectives and backgrounds will consistently lead to a better workplace for our MOOsters (employees) and a better product for our customers.

MOO does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion or belief, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, marital status, disability or any other protected class. We are actively working to create a diverse & inclusive team.