Principal Product Manager

About Auror
At Auror, we're empowering the retail industry to tackle theft and Organised Retail Crime, a $150 Billion problem globally. It's high volume crime that's increasingly organised in nature and is putting people, retailers, and communities at risk every day.
Founded in New Zealand 11 years ago, we're working with some of the best and largest retailers in the world across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
Auror is connecting people and intelligence to reduce crime. We're using technology for good.
In partnership with our leading retail partners, we need people with the passion, determination, and innovation required to overcome one of the world's largest problems. If you're looking to make a difference with and for the people dedicated to stopping crime, for good, then we want you on our team.
The Role
We are going through an exciting period of growth at Auror! Over the next year, we're expecting our product squad (product management, product design, engineering, quality, data & AI, security, and technical customer enablement) to grow to over 200 people.
In this role, you will be responsible for driving the product's growth, strategy, and execution of solutions that transform data into meaningful insights while exploring opportunities to safely and responsibly leverage AI, to ensure we continue to deliver customer outcomes through the Auror product that our customers love.
We're looking for someone who aligns with our philosophy on how to build great products. That is, teams should have a strong understanding of who uses their product, how they use it, and how they feel about it. We believe PMs should be embedded with design and engineering teams, collaborating with cross-functional team members to make sure their product solves the problems they set out to.
Practically, this role will involve:

• Customer Focus: Engage with customers and key partners to deeply understand the problem space, pain points, and opportunities for actionable insights. Champion the customer voice throughout the product lifecycle.
• Product Strategy: Collaborate with key stakeholders to align product strategy with our customer needs, company goals, and objectives. Own the vision and roadmap for your stream.
• Product delivery: Play a key role in ensuring we ship high-quality products, at a high cadence, that consistently deliver on customer outcomes, partnering with engineering, design, data, and commercial teams to ensure smooth execution, balancing technical feasibility with delivering customer and business value.
• Innovation: Stay abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies, and drive innovation to ensure our products remain cutting-edge and competitive.
• Mentorship and coaching: Finding moments and opportunities to level up the team through coaching, and mentoring.
• Commercial and Strategic Leadership: Lead strategic decisions to ensure product-market fit, scalability, and value delivery. Understand the commercial impact of insights-driven solutions on customers and the business.
• Leverage Data and AI Thoughtfully: Identify opportunities to integrate AI and advanced analytics into the platform in a sensible, safe, and impactful way. Collaborate cross-functionally to drive ethical AI practices.
• Measure and Communicate Success: Define and track key product metrics. Communicate progress, outcomes, and learnings to stakeholders and the wider business.

This role reports to Chardi Taylor, Director of Product
I'm originally from South Africa, and five years ago, my family and I made the big move to New Zealand - a place we now call home. My career has been focused on product leadership, working across product strategy, development, and coaching teams to deliver real value to customers. I thrive when collaborating with smart, motivated people, tackling complex problems, and building solutions that make a tangible impact in the community.
When I'm not deep in product discussions or at a Product Aotearoa community event, you'll find me outdoors with my family, exploring New Zealand's incredible scenery, or running around after my daughter (who keeps me on my toes!). I also enjoy playing games - whether it's board games, video games, or anything that brings a bit of friendly competition.
Requirements
You're the ideal candidate if you have/are:

• A proven track record delivering world-class B2B SaaS products to market.
• A strong "customer-centric" mindset in designing roadmaps and building products that meet our customers' current and future needs.
• Not only able to shape a high-level strategic initiative but can also roll up your sleeves to get the job done.
• Experienced using data to drive areas of improvement and product strategy.
• Strong strategic thinker with a proven track record of contributing to and driving product strategy.
• Strong executor with a proven track record of shipping products fast to a high quality.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written. Thoughtful, high empathy and social intelligence, with the ability to deliver all types of information and context to different people in ways that resonate.
• A proactive self-starter, organised, focused, and with a strong bias for action and forward momentum.

Nice to have

• Experience working on products with a global scale (and teams in multiple regions and timezones)
• Experience building product features that turn data into actionable insights, which may include embedding analytics tools (such as PowerBI, Tableau, or Looker), using LLMs to generate summaries, or providing context-aware information and recommendations.
• Experience innovating with new technologies (including AI & machine learning)
• An understanding of machine learning techniques and their capabilities, such as traditional models (logistic regression, boosted decision trees), large language models (LLMs such as ChatGPT), and image models (such as CNNs).

We are looking for people who demonstrate a strong alignment to our Guiding Principles (you can find these on our Careers page ).
Auror is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible application process to all candidates and we are actively working to improve diversity within the tech industry. We celebrate diversity and inclusiveness at Auror, regardless of (but not limited to) race, gender, sexual orientation, family status, religion, ethnicity, national origin, physical disability, veteran status, or age.
If you need adjustments to any part of our recruitment process because of accessibility reasons, please do not hesitate to let us know during the application process. We will work with you to identify adjustments that will allow you to perform at your best.
What our interview process looks like:
We know interviewing can be daunting so we want to take some stress out of the process by sharing the interview process you can expect for this role.
Initial chat [30 min]
Phone / video screen: Meet with our People Experience partner to get a feel for what it would be like to work with Auror and ask any questions you may have about the company and role.
‍Product management chat [45-60 min]
Time to chat with our Director of Product Management, Chardi. You'll be asked questions about your product management experience and skills. We'll be wanting to see what your preferred ways of working are and how comfortable you'd be with the way teams work at Auror.
Challenge interview [60-90 min]
In this round you'll meet cross-functional peers from engineering, design, data & AI and present a challenge. We want to understand how you approach solving a problem. We will be sure to give you plenty of information and context to ensure you feel comfortable and prepared.. By the end of this call, you should have a great idea of what it's like to work at Auror, and we should also have a great idea of what it would be like to have you on the team. We'll ask a range of questions and encourage you to do the same.
Benefits

• Competitive salary range: Depending on level of experience of IC5 ($165,000-$180,000)

• Employee share scheme: You'll own part of a company making a real difference!
• Flexibility: We are hard-working and outcome focused, but recognise there is more to life than work. We promote a healthy work/life blend.
• Shorter work weeks (at full pay): Everyone gets Friday afternoons off, so you can start your weekend early, and do more of whatever it is that makes you happy.
• Focus on mental and physical health: We understand how vital our health is and have policies to support your wellness, including: Wellness Days, and up to three expert sessions paid for every year.
• Health insurance: We prioritise looking after your health by covering 100% of your individual health insurance plan through nib health insurance for all New Zealand team members
• Family-friendly: We offer comprehensive parental leave and benefits for primary and non-primary caregivers, including a baby bonus and meals delivered to your door.
• Personal growth: We support our team to participate in courses, conferences, or events that will help them develop their skills.
• Team love: We have regular team lunches and social events where most (if not all) activities are during work hours.

Next steps:
If you're excited about our mission and you have the experience and a passion for this role, please hit "Apply".
If you're not sure that you tick all the boxes but feel you're close to what we're looking for, please apply anyway! We're proud that Auror is a place where everyone can learn and grow so we'd love to hear from you.
You'll be asked to submit a cover letter as part of your application. While this is optional we do encourage it, as we find cover letters can tell a story that resumes alone often cannot. Our hiring team love to understand what attracted you to this role and why you are excited about the opportunity to join Auror.
Once you apply, you'll hear from us to acknowledge your application. If you have questions about any of the above, or if you have any accessibility requirements, we'll be able to help you from there.