Chief Digital Transformation Officer in City of London

Navigator – London (Hybrid) Chief Product Officer Executive | Full-time | Reports to CEO Navigator is a performance media agency specialising in travel. We run campaigns globally across paid social, Google Ads, and programmatic for travel brands and agencies. We have scaled the business, work with some of the biggest brands and agencies in the world, and have partnerships with more than 20 of the world's largest travel booking platforms. We are transforming into the first, and only, true commerce media network in travel—a standalone network at the scale of Uber Advertising, built on first-party data that no one else has. Our ambition is to move from a service business that manually activates campaigns to a programmatic-first network that operates autonomously at scale for both endemic and non-endemic advertisers around the world. Navigator is being built to solve both by creating a unified network with consistent data, measurement, and activation across every channel, powered by more than two billion first-party data signals. The network is in its early stages, our machine learning foundations are being established, and advertising spend is already live. The Chief Product Officer has a dual mandate. The second responsibility is to build Navigator's AI-native, programmatic-first commerce media network. instead, it will be automated, evolved, and ultimately absorbed into the network. The CPO will own this transformation from end to end. Navigator's product philosophy is based on an agent-to-tools architecture comprising foundational machine learning and a curated ecosystem of AI technologies. The first layer is an AI-native media workflow and orchestration platform capable of planning, activating, pacing, and optimising campaigns across DSPs, SSPs, RTB, Meta, TikTok, and other channels with minimal manual intervention. The second layer is an intelligence engine that continuously optimises campaigns, delivers real-time insights, and extracts value from more than two billion first-party data signals to create the most valuable audience and data products available to brands seeking to reach travellers. The immediate priority is automating the existing agency operation across Meta, TikTok, and Google Ads. The Chief Product Officer will identify friction throughout campaign workflows, including briefing, setup, trafficking, optimisation, and reporting, and implement AI-powered agentic workflows that reduce manual effort while increasing scale, speed, consistency, and accuracy. They will improve the client experience through faster reporting and richer performance insights without increasing operational overhead. The CPO will own Navigator's agentic media buying roadmap, building on existing partnerships with Scope3 and Kargo's Kera platform to transform early innovation into a scalable, differentiated product. They will lead development towards fully autonomous campaign planning, activation, pacing, and optimisation while establishing the machine learning foundations required for audience segmentation, bid optimisation, frequency management, and predictive performance modelling. The role also includes leading the company's transition from predominantly paid social activation to a programmatic-first commerce media network. While Meta and TikTok will remain core revenue channels, the Chief Product Officer will scale Navigator's DSP, SSP, and RTB infrastructure into the network's primary activation capability. They will develop a unified activation layer that provides a consistent data model and buying interface across paid social and programmatic environments while managing strategic technical partnerships, API integrations, certifications, and evolving industry standards. Navigator's first-party data represents its competitive advantage. The Chief Product Officer will own the strategy, architecture, and commercial development of this data estate, ensuring it is structured, governed, and optimised for commercial value. They will oversee clean room integrations with partners to create a unified, privacy-safe view of traveller behaviour, enabling advanced audience modelling and targeting. They will build continuous campaign data feedback loops that ingest live performance data, improve optimisation models, and generate actionable client insights. They will also ensure privacy-by-design, regulatory compliance, and strong data governance are embedded throughout the platform. Navigator currently supports whichever measurement solutions clients or agencies require, and the Chief Product Officer will ensure seamless integration with third-party measurement providers while positioning the business to expand its own measurement capabilities as the network matures. The Chief Product Officer will build and lead the product and engineering organisation, recruiting and structuring teams capable of delivering the platform at scale. They will own the product roadmap, balancing priorities across agency automation, agentic media buying, programmatic infrastructure, and the data platform while making clear trade-off decisions. They will work closely with commercial teams to ensure product capabilities translate into compelling client propositions, support sales opportunities, and deliver measurable business outcomes. The ideal candidate has significant product leadership experience within ad technology and has built or scaled programmatic infrastructure such as DSPs, SSPs, DMPs, or data marketplaces. They possess deep expertise in performance marketing across Meta and TikTok and understand campaign architecture, audience strategy, optimisation, and how to systematise media operations at scale. They have worked closely with machine learning and data science teams to deliver production AI models and understand where agentic AI can safely automate workflows and where human oversight remains essential. They have experience operating live service businesses while simultaneously building technology platforms and understand how to balance operational excellence with long-term product development. The successful candidate also has substantial experience working with first-party data and clean room technologies, including platforms such as AWS Clean Rooms, Snowflake, InfoSum, Habu, or equivalent solutions. Commercial awareness is essential. The Chief Product Officer understands how product strategy influences revenue growth, customer retention, pricing, and market differentiation. Experience within a commerce media network, travel technology platform, or vertical data marketplace would be advantageous. An engineering background, including direct leadership of engineering teams, is desirable, as is experience guiding a business through the transition from founder-led product development to the more structured processes typically associated with Series A to Series B growth.