Director of Product-AI

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.

Xero views the application of intelligent, data-driven products and services at scale as a key competitive advantage for our business, now and into the future. 

We’re hiring a Director of Product - AI to lead Xero’s AI product management team. Xero is on a mission to reinvent financial and business intelligence through AI, to help millions of businesses globally. AI is a top priority within Xero, and we’ve been investing heavily in this area.

We’re currently building JAX (in beta), Xero’s genAI-powered agent to handle financial and business advisory tasks and Q&A. And we’re investing in AI/ML throughout our products, including efforts such as proactive insights, document extraction, and task automation. We’re looking for a director of product to lead the AI PM team. This person will lead the vision and strategy for AI at Xero, and be responsible for delivering a highly ambitious roadmap with exec level visibility. Come join us as we push the boundaries of technology and reinvent financial intelligence!

We’re looking for this candidate to be based in our San Mateo office or work remotely in West Coast US.

What you'll do:

• Consistently review, monitor and interrogate the commercial & customer results of products, areas and teams to inform product strategy and practice
• Lead and manage a product or group of products across the end-to-end lifecycle (e.g. launch through to sunset) to ensure maintenance and support throughout the life of the product
• Responsible for signing off on an overall technical direction and architecture from the product perspective (ie, that tradeoffs are aligned with product direction).
• Be accountable for all the equivalent product management responsibilities, at a product area including
• Network across senior levels at Xero to ensure the products within the portfolio connect to Xero’s strategy, objectives and futureDevelops trusting relationships with senior level stakeholders, where conversations lead to actionable outcomes
• Articulates a narrative to a diverse set of senior stakeholders to influence outcomes

What you’ll bring with you

• Experience building AI products
• Experience setting strategy for and building user-facing 0-1 products
• Thrives in ambiguous environments
• Strong stakeholder management skills
• Successfully delivered highly complex execution programs
• Experience managing and developing PM teams
• Demonstrated experience collaborating with diverse and senior stakeholder groups to realize customer / commercial outcomes
• Strong track record of addressing customer needs through innovative use of technology
• Effectively influenced outcomes at all levels in a variety of contexts
• Extensive experience in leading cross portfolio initiatives to deliver customer / business outcomes
• Demonstrated success in leading a growth oriented product team, with responsibility for achieving product metric targets and commercial outcomes
• Demonstrated experience in defining overall business & product strategy, as well as product roadmaps 
•  Proven experience collaborating with a diverse stakeholder group across engineering, marketing, and product management to develop products & realize commercial targets
• Proven ability to influence outcomes at all levels without direct authority

Why Xero? 

Diversity of people brings diversity of thought, and we like that. Our human-first culture of respect, fairness, and inclusion is what helps Xeros thrive and work and beyond. 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, employee resource groups, wellbeing programming and allowances, medical, dental, vision, and disability insurance, fertility and family forming financial support, 401k contribution matching, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices with snacks and break areas, flexible working, career development 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.