Position Overview:

The CEO owns the vision here, and that's not changing. What has never really existed and what's now being handed over properly, is everything that has to happen underneath it. Turning that vision into goals a small, fast moving team can actually act on, working out what matters most when everything feels urgent, seeing things through commercially and being straight about whether the business is building the right things. Right now, all of that sits with the CEO, and by their own reckoning, it's about half of their job. This role is about taking that on in full, working closely with the VP Engineering and a strong senior product manager, and reporting directly to the CEO.

Twelve months in, success looks like three things. The near-term product vision delivered, that vision actually paying off commercially and the business freed up to finally chase some of the bigger, more ambitious bets it can see clearly but doesn't yet have the room to take on.

Responsibilities:

• Own execution properly. Set real goals across a portfolio of fast moving projects and hold people to both the goal and whether it actually fits how customers use the product.
• Take a fast moving vision and turn it into something a team can act on, weighing up a lot of customer feedback, internal input and new market signals against clear commercial thinking.
• Work closely with VP Engineering and the wider team on how the business works day to day and be honest about where that's not yet good enough.
• Own what happens commercially once something ships. Working with sales and customer success to bring it to life, marketing to tell its story, and finance to pressure test pricing.
• Explain the roadmap and the thinking behind it, clearly and honestly, including when and why priorities change.
• Be a genuine thinking partner to the CEO on strategy, properly involved in it, without needing to own it yourself.
• Show up fully as part of the leadership team. Challenge people, take challenge back and hold your own in conversations that go well beyond product.
• Lead the three big product shifts already on the table for the business's next chapter.

Requirements:

• A real track record of owning execution, not just holding a roadmap. Setting goals, making the hard calls on priority and being honest about what actually worked.
• Genuine experience working inside an AI native product and engineering team, not just having played with the tools yourself. You understand what that way of working actually demands, including downstream in go-to-market and pace.
• A 'first principles' thinker. Someone who starts by asking what problem you're actually solving, then works backwards from there, rather than arriving with a playbook already in hand.
• Experience working closely with and genuinely enjoying, a founder-CEO who owns the vision. You're comfortable disagreeing, including in the room with everyone watching and you don't need to own the vision to feel like you matter.
• Strong commercial instincts, comfortable talking about things like NRR and GRR and able to work naturally across sales, customer success, marketing and finance to make things happen.
• A genuine appetite for this kind of environment, rather than bringing in a familiar process or looking for something a bit easier. If you're chasing a bigger title, or something more comfortable, this probably isn't the opportunity for you.
• Comfortable holding a lot of competing priorities in your head at once and building an argument from data and first principles that can hold up in a room full of smart, opinionated people.

Nice to have:

• Experience selling into or building product for a similarly regulated, relationship led sector.
• A path that combines management consulting with a few years in product, rather than one long stretch as VP inside a large, siloed structure.
• Experience owning pricing and packaging decisions in a business with complex, relationship led customers.
• Genuinely hands on. Comfortable prototyping, querying data or working in the tools yourself, with enough of an eye for design to brief and direct a designer well.

Alongside a genuinely generous package, you'll join a small, high trust leadership team that takes the work seriously without any of the theatre.

If this sounds like a role that you'd be interested in discussing, please reach out to Hera for a confidential conversation.

Hera recruits with diversity and inclusion at its core and continues to embrace, champion and recognise the incredible assets that come from working and collaborating with people from all walks of life.

We're here to support you every step of the way, so if you require reasonable adjustments during the application or interview process, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'll guide you through how we're able to support you with your specific needs and will ensure a fair and accessible recruitment process for all candidates, without you having to disclose the details behind your disability or condition.