Head of Product, UK Payroll

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive. 

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.

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

How you'll make impact:

• As a Head 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. People leadership of new and experienced product leaders and their teams is a significant part of the role. 

What you'll do:

• 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 Xeroʼs strategy, objectives and future
• Develops trusting relationships with senior level stakeholders, where conversions lead to actionable outcomes
• Articulates 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 realizing 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, 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 optimize the product, while optimizing existing features
• Standardize 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.
• 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
• You will be leading new or established leaders who have teams of their own, so itʼs important youʼre effectively communicating and cascading information appropriately to ensure teams are engaged and are connected to strategy
• 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 compliance with Xero policies, processes and requirements
• Role model exemplary leadership by developing leadership capabilities and upholding our Xero Values.
• Support the growth and development of your direct reports, ensuring they have what they need to perform their roles and feel empowered and engaged
• Foster a safe environment for people to experiment and learn
• You drive performance and results in your team 

What Success looks like:

• You're responsible for the establishment of OKRs and your team's work is contributing to achieve OKRs
• You deeply understand our customer and their problems
• You have strong relationships with your stakeholders who are engaged and have a detailed understanding of your vision, strategy and roadmap
• You have an accessible, transparent, prioritized and well executed roadmap across portfolio/sub-portfolio which focuses on value to Xero and the customer
• You champion product initiatives, narratives and vision, driving alignment across teams and organizations
• You team members are able to see the big picture and connect their work and their team's to strategy
• You are an effective coach, asking important questions
• Your roadmap is executable
• Support your team to remove barriers
• You build inclusive, resilient and psychologically safe teams
• Collaborate internationally to create horizontal alignment across Xero
• You demonstrate and amplify Xero's Values

Why Xero?

Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, private medical insurance, gym passes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.

Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single competency or experience . If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be just the right person for this role and Xero. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at time of application and throughout the interview process.