Product Lead in Slough

FANZO exists to bring sports fans together to create unforgettable sporting memories. We connect three audiences at once: Fans looking for where to watch and have a great sports experience, Venues (from independent pubs to enterprise bar networks) who want those fans through the door, and Rights holders and brand partners who want to engage social sports fans at scale. We operate across multiple markets - the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia, and the USA - each with its own intricacies around sports viewing in bars.

We are a small, fast-moving product and engineering organisation that ships real product to real customers every week. Our CEO has been the de facto Product Lead to date; this hire takes that mandate on properly so the business can scale with a dedicated product leader.

The role involves owning product strategy and delivery day-to-day, working closely with the CEO, who will stay involved in high-level product vision. You will turn our business objectives into a clear, prioritised product strategy and roadmap, raise the quality and pace of how we scope and ship, and establish where AI can make our product and our processes materially better.

This is a hands-on leadership role, not a purely strategic one. You will lead and grow a tight product team while still getting into the detail of discovery, scoping, prioritisation and shipping. You will be the connective tissue between commercial, product and engineering. There is clear opportunity for this role to grow into a Head of Product as the team and remit scale, with compensation reviewed accordingly. London-based, hybrid working.

What you'll own:

• Product strategy & roadmap - Translate company OKRs and client projects into product objectives and a tiered roadmap (near-term delivery, medium-term direction, longer-term initiatives), keeping the board and leadership team confident in where product is heading.
• Prioritisation & resourcing - Own how we allocate product and engineering capacity across commercial work, core product and discovery - making clear, defensible trade-offs across competing customer needs and markets.
• Scoping & delivery quality - Raise the standard of how work is defined and handed to engineering, reduce overrunning projects, and make the speed-vs-quality call explicit on every piece of work.
• Discovery - Lead customer and market discovery across fans, venues and enterprise/brand partners, so we build the right things - especially in less-developed areas like fan engagement and CRM.
• AI in product & process - Identify, test and embed where AI can improve the product itself and how the team works. From discovery and scoping to delivery.
• Team leadership - Line-manage and coach the product team, and set the operating rhythm (planning cadence, rituals, ways of working with engineering).

Who you'll work with:

The role will provide leadership and line management to members of the Product function. You will partner day-to-day with Engineering leadership and the commercial team, and report directly to the CEO.

What we're looking for:

Essential:

• 5+ years in product, including senior product experience, with a track record of owning strategy and shipping impactful Product.
• Comfortable across multiple customer types. You can hold consumer (fans), SME (independent venues) and enterprise (brands, rights holders, bar groups) needs in your head at once and prioritise between them.
• Hands-on and curious. You want to get into the detail - talking to customers, writing sharp specs, digging into data - not just directing from above.
• Strong scoping and prioritisation instincts. You bring clarity to ambiguity and make the hard trade-off calls with conviction.
• A people leader. You have experience coaching and getting the best out of an effective team around you.
• A sports fan who is genuinely excited about the FANZO cause - getting fans together to create unforgettable sporting memories.

Strongly preferred:

• Genuinely AI-literate. You are curious about and fluent in how modern AI tools work, and have real examples of using them to improve a product or a team's ways of working.
• Good Manager. Experience in direct reports, and evidence for progressing individuals and a team.

Nice to have:

• Experience in marketplaces, media/sports-tech, or products serving both consumers and businesses.
• Experience introducing or maturing product operating models (OKRs, discovery practices, roadmap frameworks).

How we work:

We run on OKRs and use lightweight frameworks (a GROW-model approach to retros and planning, product objectives set one level below business OKRs). We plan on a tiered horizon and protect time across commercial delivery, core product, discovery and maintenance/upgrades. We value people who work through ambiguity, own the outcome rather than the ticket, and communicate trade-offs openly.