Product Director, Innovation & New Ventures

About the role

You define the portfolio of new bets and own outcomes from concept to cash, orchestrating discovery and delivery across complex markets. You lead product managers, set commercial direction, and drive category creation in government, education, and nonprofit spaces where trust and compliance are paramount. This role suits a builder who turns messy domains into coherent products that win by aligning customer needs with business viability. You will navigate ambiguity, balancing strategic vision with execution to ensure initiatives move from raw potential to measurable value. Your work will establish the foundation for entirely new ways of serving mission-driven organizations and the people within them. You will act as the decisive voice for the portfolio, ensuring that every experiment is grounded in customer reality and strategic intent. This is an opportunity to shape what the future of specialized enterprise software looks like for organizations that matter deeply to society.

Key facts

What you'll do

Chart the portfolio of new product bets; choose focus, sequence work, and decide what advances while explicitly deprioritizing distractions.

Build the core product managers who run each build; coach craft, set standards, and drive performance through structured feedback and career growth.

Shape what gets built by listening to customers and discovery; own the moments that matter most from first interview to validated learning.

Own commercial outcomes for the portfolio, including pricing, packaging, and win-rate growth by aligning value messaging with stakeholder economics.

Hold the team accountable for adoption, usage, and customer impact beyond shipping, tying results to clear metrics and learning loops.

Secure development capacity and uphold delivery standards across the entire portfolio, negotiating tradeoffs with engineering leadership.

Operate with executive-level trust, own program direction, and represent it to senior leadership through crisp narratives and data-driven updates.

Forge strong partnerships across product, engineering, sales, and customer success to ensure seamless execution and shared ownership of results.

Translate complex regulatory and operational realities of public sector and nonprofit markets into clear product requirements and roadmaps.

Champion an experimentation culture where small bets are tested quickly, successful patterns are scaled, and failures inform faster pivots.

Requirements

You must have direct experience building products in accounting, financial management, FP&A, HR, recruiting, or project management; you have shipped in these domains and understand the nuances of each.

You demonstrate mastery of the full product lifecycle; you lead and grow product managers who raise the bar through coaching, clarity, and constructive challenge.

You possess deep fluency in how mid-market services organizations run their back office and what makes ERP distinct from generic SaaS, including integration, data, and compliance realities.

You show commercial ownership; you understand how product decisions move ARR, win rate, and retention, and you optimize for sustainable growth.

You maintain a bias to ship and a love of seeing real products in customers' hands, balancing speed with quality and long-term platform thinking.

You bring a serious AI practice; you work AI-first, push tooling, and shape how customers work with emerging capabilities while managing risk.

You exhibit executive presence that commands rooms with leadership and collaborative customer sessions, earning trust quickly with senior stakeholders.

You excel at influence without authority through clarity, momentum, and cross-functional persuasion, aligning diverse teams around a shared vision.

You thrive in regulated environments where security, privacy, and governance are non-negotiable and must be embedded in product decisions.

You communicate with precision and empathy, able to simplify complexity for executives while providing enough detail for delivery teams.

You are comfortable operating with incomplete information, making timely decisions based on best available insights and updating course as new evidence emerges.

You are committed to building inclusive products and experiences that reflect the diversity of the customers you serve and the teams you lead.

Nice to have

Experience working directly within public sector or highly regulated environments where compliance shapes product choices.

Familiarity with AI-first workflows and how emerging tools can reshape productivity for back office functions.

A track record of launching new ventures or internal products that reached scale within a defined timeframe.

Practical notes

This is a full-time position based in London, gb.

The role may require security clearance for customer projects and access to sensitive data; after an offer, we may request background checks, potentially requiring criminal record, right to work, and identification details, handled per local privacy laws.

Candidates should be prepared for interviews, assessments, and reference verification as part of our rigorous hiring process.

Relocation support may be considered for exceptional candidates based on business needs and approval.

Travel is primarily based in the London area, with occasional domestic travel to engage with customers and partners as needed.

Visa sponsorship may be considered for eligible candidates, subject to role requirements and business priorities.

The compensation figure stated reflects target base salary and does not include potential variable pay, equity, or other benefits which may be offered separately.

This role reports to senior leadership and is critical to the execution of our strategic growth agenda in priority markets.

You are expected to engage deeply with our Act4Good programme and our Environmental, Social, and Governance commitments as part of your contribution to the business.

Success in this role will be defined by your ability to deliver measurable outcomes, including adoption, usage, customer impact, and commercial performance over both short and long horizons.