The Head of Product role at notonthehighstreet.com is a broad and demanding one. We’re unashamed about putting our users first – both customers and small business sellers. One of the reasons for our success is our relentless commitment to building excellent products that create a great user experience for everyone.
This role bridges the technical and business worlds, designing products with creative and talented engineers, designers and analysts. Working closely with our engineers to guide products from ideation to launch, the Head of Product then works to continuously improve them based on quantitative and qualitative research.
The person in this role will need to thrive in a culture where change is normal and decisions happen quickly. They should enjoy building MVPs and then getting deep into the numbers to determine if a product or feature is worth further investment. It is important the individual feels comfortable and at ease talking to colleagues from a range of disciplines, whether they are discussing launching a new product with someone from marketing, or speaking to one of our software engineers about how they’d like to build it.
Responsibilities
- Own the road map and backlog for our consumer site, seller site, iPhone app, internal tools and internationalisation
- Work as part of the senior management team to identify market opportunities and help drive product vision and strategy, aligning the rest of the organisation to deliver on this strategy
- Work on product definition, analysis, prioritisation and planning in order to transform business ideas into packages of work
- Build business cases and confidently present these to peer managers and the board to gain approval
- Be accountable for delivery across all road maps
- Be the first point of contact for defining requirements and for scheduling and delegating work
- Engage with customers, sellers and internal stakeholders to understand their requirements, as well as capturing your own via primary research
- Take account of technical debt and build balanced road maps
- Working within Agile you’ll lead sprint planning, retrospectives and continuously improve our product development processes
- Make tough trade-offs and balance ‘do it right’ with ‘do it now’
- Work with third parties to assess partnership opportunities
- Track product performance, including identifying key performance indicators.
- Lead and mentor a team of five product managers and web analysts to include objective setting, regular one-to-ones, personal development, staff engagement, appraisals and performance management.
About You
With at least six years’ experience as a product manager, you should already have launched a number of products that you’ll be proud to demonstrate and talk to us about. The first question you always ask is “what is best for the customer?” and you’ll inspire others to produce great work by creating a shared vision. The ability to solve complex problems and prioritise a vast and diverse backlog will be one of your key skills, and you’ll be a natural problem solver and decision maker. You’ll have outstanding analytical skills and a data-driven mind-set; combining your past experience with well thought through assumptions, instinct, and data when making decisions.
You should have a passion for project delivery, with a natural bias toward action. Breaking down complex problems into meaningful user stories that people can understand, and that drive development at a fast pace, is also a key feature of this role. You’ll manage a large and complex backlog across multiple work streams, which will consist of both new features and technical debt, so you’ll often need to make tough trade-offs between them. You should be able to confidently explain your vision for the product at all levels of the business. You’ll also have a passion for mobile and be able to talk to us about mobile products you’ve launched previously.
Skills & Experience
Essential
- At least six years of product management experience
- Experience of leading product management teams
- Able to demonstrate managing a product through its entire lifecycle, from inception and launch through to iterations and retirement
- Proven experience producing and managing functional, intuitive and user-centric websites
- Excellent data analytics experience – turning insights into actionable recommendations
- Previous experience of leading teams in an Agile environment.
Company Description
Award-winning marketplace notonthehighstreet.com is one of the most high profile e-commerce businesses in the UK and has experienced explosive growth since the company was founded in 2006.
From our offices based in Richmond, the digital and e-commerce hub of south west London, our site brings together over 3,000 independent small UK businesses that, combined, sell over 70,000 products through a single checkout. This offers an affordable route to market for thousands of designer-makers and small businesses that otherwise struggle for custom or lose out in the wholesale battle with high street giants. Each small business has been carefully chosen by notonthehighstreet.com for its innovative, well-made products and to inspire shoppers looking for style, originality and quality, but who cannot find what they are searching for on the high street.
Thousands of items are available to buy from a choice of departments – home and garden, women, men, baby and child, gifts and weddings – as well as dedicated collections to highlight the best products and gift ideas for key occasions including Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day and Christmas.
At notonthehighstreet.com we’re passionate about working with talented, dedicated, creative people with exceptionally high standards; people who are committed to their roles, their careers and to the company. Above all we’re passionate about supporting small businesses and delivering a first-class experience to our customers.
To apply
Please send your CV to davethomson@notonthehighstreet.com