Full-Time London Salary: £100-120k + equity + bonus + benefits

Commonplace VP Product and Technology

Shape and deliver our market-leading digital democratisation product that creates exceptional customer and respondent value, and expands on our purpose.

About the company

Commonplace is a fast-growing Series A startup in the digital engagement space. Our best-in-class, award-winning SaaS platform hosts inclusive conversations where communities and organisations collaborate to create better places to live and work, and improve the quality of life and fabric of their neighbourhood.

We’re moving fast to meet ever-changing expectations, delivering extraordinary engagement from communities and insights to our customers.  We must evolve rapidly but with nuance; disruptively but with integrity; and most important of all – together with our team members, customers and respondents.

This role offers a unique opportunity: to inspire, shape and realise the Commonplace product for our customers and respondents around the UK, and the world. We’re searching for someone who is a proven leader of cross-functional product teams but, as importantly, lives our core values, is a great communicator who translates technical complexities into strategic guidance, and inspires a continued focus on delivery in the team around them.

The Role:

Upon closing our imminent Series A funding round, this role will oversee the doubling in size of our cross-functional product development team from 4 to around 10 over the course of 2020 – a team comprising full-stack software engineers, a platform architect, product managers and product designers.  You’ll support the combined team as they deliver a delightful experience for our B2B partners and the B2B2C communities of users.

Utilising your previous experience of delivering user-centric products in the ambiguous and oft-changing start-up world, you’ll assist the CEO and board as they make decisions on our strategic direction, providing real-time updates about our capability, strengths and also potential weaknesses in the team. You’ll ensure our plans are ambitious, but ultimately robust and achievable. You’ll devise development plans for the product teams, stretching our people whilst ensuring they feel motivated, recognised and rewarded.

Things we’d love you to accomplish in the first 6 months or so:

Define, in collaboration with our Product and Engineering Leads, a post-Series A product roadmap for the remainder of 2020, 2021 and beyond.
Own the hands-on delivery of 1 or more product workstreams.
Assess our current metrics and methods for tracking the success of our product output and planning, advocating change where necessary and ensuring a continual focus on delivery.
Work directly with the engineering team and lead(s) to ensure that the tools and processes we subscribe to enable us to produce the best possible solution within the most efficient timeframe.

 

To be successful, your background should include:

Hands-on product delivery working with a cross-functional team as:
Senior Product Manager, ready to take the next step in your career
Head of Product
VP / Director of Product
Experience in a Seed, institutionally-funded Series A / Series B startup or a scale-up
Any experience in disruptive technology or the ‘built environment’ is also beneficial
Experience working with software development teams. Bonus points if you’ve coded yourself.

We are building a product with a uniquely diverse reach, and in order to build the most diverse team we are happy to flex our requirements where possible.

Your tasks and responsibilities will be to:

Translate our aspirations into a product vision and roadmap that meets our purpose, delivers customer and user value, and is achievable and distinctive in the marketplace
Advocate this vision and inspire the team
Speak publicly as required about the mission of Commonplace, the product and its exciting role in creating better places to live
Take ultimate responsibility for planning and delivery of the product roadmap to the CEO and the board, and for the performance of the product team including direct reports Head of Product and Head of Engineering
Provide operational leadership of our product and tech teams – including: agreeing and monitoring processes, mentoring team members, board representation and team culture
Manage and take responsibility for the product team budget
Direct the discussion on all technical considerations that will impact our capacity for success in future. This could include scalability, security, technical debt, processes and methodologies, best practice, cloud architecture, the application of emerging tech like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and anything else technical
Experienced at leading teams using Agile (SCRUM)
Plan and deliver growth of the team:
Understand and prioritise the skills mix that we need to achieve the product objectives
Plan and undertake recruitment to create an exceptional team
Create and deploy a deep understanding of the market and user needs to inform product development, including by:
Devising and tracking user, customer and product metrics and inform product improvements
Conducting and managing appropriate user research
Researching the broader market
Understanding our industry contemporary’s propositions

Behaviours

Exceptional people skills: an instinct for how to energise individuals and the whole team, balancing quality and scalability of output with speed of delivery
Experience of leading constant innovation in a fast-moving commercial environment, ideally with a startup
Understands balance of delivery speed vs. tech implementation
A proven analytical decision maker, even with insufficient data and ambiguity

Compensation and benefits

A good salary, with company bonuses and an equity component once you’ve settled in
Flexible working hours – you are free to work the hours that suit your lifestyle
Flexible holiday arrangements – we don’t limit how much you take
A Macbook Pro to work on

We are a group of technologists, designers and urbanists with a strong belief in open collaboration and the benefits it brings to communities. These values also underpin the culture of our workplace, which will give you a dynamic, friendly workplace, unlimited leave, and equity in the company in the form of share options.

Tagged as: Flexible hours