Director Product - Platform & Identity

About this role

DIRECTOR PRODUCT - PLATFORM & IDENTITY

OUR PURPOSE

At Xero, we’re here to supercharge small businesses. By making small business more efficient every day, connecting them with big business technology and empowering a community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

HOW YOU’LL MAKE AN IMPACT

As a Director of Product you will lead multiple product teams and, where required, step in to solve complex and protracted product problems. You will support and enable your team to do the best work of their lives through practising the great people leader framework. Your impact will be measured by your achievement of key commercial and customer success metrics through your management of people and teams.

You will lead a product area with high levels of complexity, ambiguity, dependencies and/or stakeholder management.

As the Director of Product, Identity and Platform, you will lead the strategy and execution of several products that underpin almost every product component at Xero. The role is highly strategic and will have significant executive and customer visibility.

You will set the vision and ambition for Xero’s growth into larger medium sized businesses. This role requires you to strategically identify the platform improvements required to service a larger business with higher complexity, design innovative solutions to scale Xero to a new standard, and collaborate with teams to execute the vision. You will be a forward-thinking product leader who can also grapple with how AI is going to change customer needs and product solutions to futureproof Xero. You’ll play a critical role in re-defining the direction of product management in the age of AI.

You’ll work cross-functionally with design, engineering, GTM, compliance teams amongst others. You’ll also work horizontally across product areas and establish the standard for horizontal product work and you’ll lead a team of 6 product managers initially, with room to grow scope significantly for a strong performer.

In this role, you’ll drive innovation and execution across identity, authentication/authorisation, fraud detection and platform reliability and stability. You’ll work across a range of areas including granular user permissions, login (including MFA, SSO, passkeys), customer due diligence platform, AI agent identity, authentication/authorisation and back-end organisational and user platforms

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Product

Be accountable for all the equivalent product management responsibilities, at a product area level, including:

- Network across Xero to ensure the products within the portfolio connect to Xero’s strategy, objectives and future

- Develop trusting relationships with senior level stakeholders, where conversions lead to actionable outcomes

- Articulate a narrative to a diverse set of senior stakeholders to influence outcomes

- Be accountable for all the equivalent product management responsibilities, at portfolio /sub-portfolio(s) level, including:

- Understand the Xero context, map out the Xero landscape and identify related value streams that might create collaboration opportunities or dependencies

- Define customer vision, bring to life the long-term future state - the difference you're going to make in your customers' lives

- Define scope and approach, define our approach to realising the vision, identifying the big bets we're going to make and the significant value drops to customers over time, including the outcomes we hope to achieve

- Developing a support strategy and plan, create low-fidelity solution concepts to explore the solution space and determine the right direction. De-risk assumptions of value, usability, feasibility and viability, in ongoing #testlearnrefine loops, increasing investment in solution only as confidence grows. Create high-level concepts to demonstrate the ideal future experience and set a north-star aspiration to guide future decision making

- Launch & monitor, align with Customer teams on launch timing, approach and specifics based on the agreed Customer Value Proposition. Lock in external messaging and other outward-facing assets. Run through a checklist of all the things that need to be considered when launching a new product or feature.

- Nurture iterative product improvements,

- Take responsibility for managing risks (in line with Xero Risk Management Standard) arising from non-functional concerns including security, privacy, regulatory change and compliance, accuracy, responsible data use and availability: consulting with stakeholders and leading trade-off decisions

- Nurture lifecycle management & sunsetting, and product improvements. Continuously monitor the performance of the product against key success measures and maintain an ongoing dialogue with customers to surface and prioritise new opportunities to optimise the product, while optimising existing features

- Standardise and improve product practice. Leaders actively support practitioners to develop their skills and succeed in their contributions to XPF Activities; they work with them to identify growth opportunities, and share their knowledge and experience in service of that growth

- Deliberately plan the work you are involved in, forecast key milestones and deliveries and track progress against the plan.

People Leadership

You will enable your team to do the best work of their lives.

- Provide team leadership, shaping the team vision, culture, product team scope and ways of working

- Enable and empower people to work autonomously where appropriate, providing guidance, coaching and mentorship.

- Actively engage with your team members about their careers, manage performance and support their growth and development

- Recruit new Xero's as required, ensuring team members are high quality, fit Xero's culture, and are on-boarded effectively

- Manage team…