Head of Product Operations: Data-Driven & Cross-Functional

hackajob is collaborating with Barclays to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role. Join us as a Head of Product Operations where you’ll own and evolve our product tooling ecosystem, ensuring it enables teams rather than slows them down. You’ll drive adoption, consistency and data quality so decisions are based on trusted, comparable insights. You’ll design and scale simple, effective ways of working, removing unnecessary process and empowering teams to move faster with greater autonomy. You’ll build real-time visibility of the product portfolio, giving leadership a clear, accurate view of performance, capacity and delivery health. Acting as the connective tissue across Product, Engineering, Design and Risk, you’ll surface and resolve blockers before they escalate. We’re looking for someone who doesn’t just manage process, but improves, challenges and removes it where needed to maximise impact.

Essentials Skills / Basic Qualifications

• Proven experience leading Product Operations, including defining prioritisation frameworks and decision-making approaches
• Ownership of the product operating model and ways of working across teams
• Experience running product and engineering planning cycles end-to-end
• Track record of building and maintaining tooling and data infrastructure to support product visibility and strong tool hygiene
• Clear ownership of product data, metrics and reporting to enable informed decision-making

Desirable Skills / Preferred Qualifications

• Experience shipping products within fintech or broader technology environments
• Exposure to scaling organisations, particularly in fast-growth or scale-up settings
• Hands-on experience using AI tools to enhance product development or operations

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role is based in London.

Purpose of the role

Product Managers are responsible for leading the strategic focus of the product(s), defining the product vision, market strategy, and competitive analysis. They think about the product's future and how it will evolve over time. They work with various teams, including marketing, engineering, operations, and sales, to ensure everyone is aligned on the product strategy. They use data and market research to inform their decisions and prioritise product features.

Accountabilities

• Define Product Strategy: Accountable for defining a product strategy that aligns with business vision, managing capabilities, balancing short-term with long-term goals, ensuring that products meet market demands and drive growth.
• Cross functional alignment: Leadership of cross functional relationships, working with various cross-functional teams to ensure alignment of product strategy and goals.
• Risk and Control: Accountable for overseeing product risk management, including identification of potential risks, development of strategies to mitigate those risks, and maintenance of alignment between the product management and control functions.
• Product Development Lifecycle: Own product development lifecycle, from concept to launch, ensuring efficient processes, on-time delivery, and alignment with E2E customer expectations and experience – working with product owners to drive change objectives.
• Deliver Product Goals and Performance: Deliver clear objectives and key outcomes to steer the product vision and ensure alignment with company’s business goals, financial targets, and strategic vision, driving long-term business success.
• Data driven decisions: Monitor product performance through data-driven analysis and insights, regularly assessing progress against objectives and adjusting the strategies as needed to optimise outcomes and maximise value for both business and customer.
• Customer-Centric Focus: Drive a customer-first approach across the product vision, ensuring customer insights, feedback, behaviours, and pain points are at the core of the product strategy and decision-making process.
• Business and financial acumen: Understanding pricing models, costs structures, and ROI to make financially grounded decisions regarding product development.

Vice President Expectations

To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures. If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements.

If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.

OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions.

Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment. Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda. Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does. Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business. Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies. Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions. Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes. Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.