Head of Product

Ex Trac is a decision intelligence company used by governments, defence organisations, financial institutions, and corporates operating in complex, fast-moving environments.

Our capabilities fuse curated data sources, domain-specific AI, and deep human expertise to transform information overload into clear, actionable foresight.

Our ambition is to become the analytical backbone that organisations rely on when geopolitical uncertainty becomes an opportunity or a strategic risk. More at extrac. ai.

The Role

We are looking for a Head of Product to own and lead product management at Ex Trac.

Ex Trac is a founder‑led, vision‑led company: the product vision is set with our founders, and your job is to translate it into a clear strategy and executable roadmap, pressure‑test it, push back constructively where the evidence demands it, and own its delivery end to end: roadmap, discovery, research, requirements, and delivery, while building the product function that supports it.

Reporting directly to the CEO, and working closely with the design, engineering, research and analysis, and wider leadership teams, you will synthesise input from across the company into a coherent product direction and make sure the team is always working on the right things at the right time.

Expect to be hands‑on. In the first year, this role is as much about establishing product operations, order, and process as it is about strategy.

• What the job involves
• Product strategy and roadmap
• Working closely with the CEO, develop, refine, and execute the product roadmap, aligning it with Ex Trac's strategic objectives and client needs.
• Translate the founders' vision for our AI‑driven products into a product strategy you can defend: validate it, challenge it constructively, agree it with the founders, and then own its delivery, balancing user needs, business goals, BD requirements, and specific client requirements.
• Support both long‑term strategic planning and short‑term sprint execution.
• Stay across all product and engineering work in flight: who is working on what, expected timelines, and what is paused, delayed, or blocked.
• Stay close to industry trends and competitor products, especially in AI and B2B Saa S.
• Discovery, definition and delivery
• Lead products end to end, from concept and planning through to delivery.
• Translate visions, feature requests, and ideas into fully developed product briefs, leading discovery, pushing for clarity and further discussion where needed, and writing and maintaining clear, actionable PRDs.
• Conduct investigations, gather information, and assess feasibility.
• Keep all stakeholders aligned and up to date as plans and requirements evolve.
• Technical and data leadership
• Apply technical judgement to guide product development, especially around AI/ML model integration, data processing, and analytics.
• Translate complex technical solutions into clear, strategic product decisions.
• Use behavioural data and analytics as a key input to decisions and prioritisation, alongside domain expertise and conviction.
• Research, validation and data
• Establish usage analytics and behavioural data to track adoption and surface friction, and build workflows to analyse and act on it.
• Favour observation over interrogation: watching people work usually tells you more than asking them what they want.
• Use user research and testing for what it does well, validating legibility, usability, and workflow fit.

This evaluative feedback should carry real weight and is often decisive; workflow fit deserves particular care given our high‑stakes users.

• Recognise the limits of research when it comes to direction: what we should build is synthesised from deep expertise across intelligence analysis, subject matter, data science, engineering, and design.
• For bets that cannot be validated up front, apply post‑deployment discipline: define success metrics and evaluation timelines, commit in advance to the evidence that would change your mind, and assess honestly whether the bet is paying off.
• Organise and run internal alpha and beta testing, plus external testing where possible; partner with Customer Success to recruit proxy users and to surface the friction, workflow issues, and pain points that feed into execution and prioritisation.
• Working with AI: Co‑Analyst
• Partner closely with the AI team to ensure AI features are genuinely useful, understandable, and aligned with what our users need.
• Help track and document the specific behaviours and styles built into Co‑Analyst responses.
• Support the work to adapt Co‑Analyst to the needs of specific external organisations.
• Building and leading the product function
• Build and formalise the product function: its agile processes, roadmapping systems, and prioritisation frameworks.
• Bring order to the product operations layer: the tooling (issue tracking, documentation), delivery workflows, and the interface between product management and delivery management.

Expect to roll up your sleeves here personally before you scale it.

• Establish metrics to track product success, adoption, and customer satisfaction.
• Grow and mentor a high‑performing product team as Ex Trac scales, fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration.
• Cross‑functional collaboration
• Act as the primary link between product, engineering, machine learning, design, customer success, and research, ensuring cohesive development cycles and smooth delivery.
• Partner closely with the design team on design and UX, engineering on build and AI/ML, and the research and analysis team on domain expertise, synthesising their input into a coherent product direction.
• Facilitate cross‑team workshops to bring evidence and expertise together, and strengthen pre‑sprint and in‑sprint communication.
• You should apply if
• You have shipped complex products in technical domains, ideally AI/ML, data, or intelligence, and product leadership is now where you do your best work: setting direction, building process, and multiplying the output of others.
• You are as comfortable in the detail as in the strategy.

Writing a PRD, interrogating usage data, or pressure‑testing a model integration with engineers is still work you enjoy, not work you have outgrown.

• You hold evidence and conviction in balance. You know when user research should lead and when expertise‑led judgement should, and you can make and defend either call.
• You want proximity to the mission and the founders.

Reporting directly to the CEO in a growth‑stage company, with the pace and ambiguity that brings, is what you are looking for rather than what you are tolerating.

• You get energy from building functions, not just products.

Processes, metrics, hiring, and mentoring are things you want to own, because you have seen what happens when nobody does.

• You are honest with yourself about what this role is not.

It is not a blank‑canvas builder role with full autonomy over vision and iteration cycles; it is a role for someone who does their best work translating a strong founder vision into an excellent product and a well‑run function, and who finds the constructive push and pull of that genuinely energising.

• Where this role can take you
• Grow the product function you build. What starts as a hands‑on leadership role becomes building, hiring, and leading a product team as Ex Trac scales.
• Shape company strategy, not just product strategy, influencing how Ex Trac positions itself at a defining moment for AI in the intelligence sector.
• Define how AI‑native intelligence products get built.

Co‑Analyst is a category‑shaping product, and the frameworks you establish for it will influence how the industry approaches human‑AI analytical workflows.

Requirements

• Ex Trac provides services to a number of government clients, some of which specify nationality criteria for individuals seeking security clearance.

For this reason, we can only consider applications from individuals who are nationals of the UK, another NATO member state, Australia or New Zealand.

• 6+ years in product management, ideally in AI/ML, data science, or intelligence‑related fields, with a proven track record of shipping complex products from concept through to delivery.
• Demonstrated experience leading product development in a startup or growth‑stage company, with a proven ability to build and scale products and processes effectively.
• Able to translate complex technical solutions into strategic product decisions, judging when user research should lead (usability and workflow fit) and when expertise‑led conviction should (what to build), and using data and analytics as inputs rather than the whole answer.
• Comfortable working hand in hand with engineering and ML teams, with a good understanding of how complex ML models are integrated into user‑facing products, alongside data processing and analytics.
• Skilled at working with engineering, ML, design, and customer success, and at synthesising input from multiple disciplines into a coherent product direction in a collaborative, agile environment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to present complex information clearly to executives, clients, and internal teams.
• Experience in threat intelligence, risk analysis, or geopolitical intelligence, or in other highly regulated or security‑sensitive environments (e. g. government, defence).
• A foundation in machine learning, data analytics, or AI product management, particularly integrating complex ML models into user‑facing products.
• Familiarity with agile methodologies and experience establishing agile processes in a startup or high‑growth environment.
• A generous benefits package, including Private Medical Health Insurance and enhanced pension contributions.
• Enhanced parental leave and a workplace nursery scheme.
• 33 days of leave across the year inclusive of bank holidays.
• Flexible working, with the opportunity to spend 3 to 4 days a week remotely alongside regular days with our team in our central London office.
• A role that combines mission‑driven purpose with cutting‑edge technology in a fast‑growing company.
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