Head of Product in Manchester

About StudentCrowd

StudentCrowd is the leading data and decision‑making platform for student accommodation in the UK. Our platform has supported more than 14 million students, and our data and insight products serve accommodation operators, investors, universities and advisors across the UK, with expansion underway into Europe and the US. We are a product‑led, cross‑functional company. Our shared product and engineering backbone delivers both a consumer student platform and commercial data and insight products. We are currently completing a growth investment round to accelerate product development and international expansion.

The Opportunity

We are hiring a hands‑on Head of Product to shape how product works at StudentCrowd as we scale. This is not a backfill. We have never had a dedicated senior product professional in the company. Our CTO has been leading product strategy alongside technical responsibilities. As we grow from one squad to three by the end of 2026, we need someone who can work with the CTO to build a product function from the ground up: the processes, the rituals, the documentation, the decision‑making frameworks, and the culture of product thinking across the organisation. You will report directly to the CTO and manage our current Product Owner from day one. Your primary focus will be the B2B data and insight products, while your direct report continues to own the B2C student platform under your guidance and oversight. For the right person, this role has a clear and concrete pathway to VP Product as the team and company scale.

Scope of the Role

• Product roadmap within our OKR framework. Product decisions at StudentCrowd are made through OKR teams. These cross‑functional teams define the outcomes we are pursuing and collaboratively shape the work, including product and feature level work, needed to deliver them. Your job is to be the connective tissue across that system: partnering with OKR teams, keeping the roadmap across the student platform and data/insight products coherent, and working with the executive team and founders on longer‑term direction. Where trade‑offs need resolving across teams, you will facilitate those decisions with an eye on customer value, commercial impact, and technical feasibility.
• Team leadership. You will line‑manage our current Product Owner from day one, supporting their development and ensuring effective delivery. As the company scales, you will grow and shape the product function, including hiring additional POs. You will foster a culture of ownership, experimentation, and evidence‑based decision making.
• Delivery across multiple teams. You will work directly with engineering squads on discovery, refinement, sprint planning, and delivery. As we grow from one squad to three, you will manage dependencies and prioritisation across teams, enabling fast and clear decision making without micromanagement.
• Product operations. You will use Jira and Confluence to manage backlogs, roadmaps, and discovery work. You will make product strategy, priorities, and decisions accessible and discoverable across the company. You will reduce reliance on tribal knowledge through strong product ops practices.
• Stakeholder collaboration. You will partner with commercial, client success, and leadership teams to ensure products meet customer needs and support revenue growth. You will represent the product function in leadership meetings and work across functions to keep product direction and company strategy in step, not just within the delivery team.

What We Are Looking For

• Product experience. You have significant experience as a Product Owner or Product Manager in a SaaS or product‑centric technology business, and you are now a year or two into a Head of Product (or equivalent) role. You have shipped products that delivered measurable business outcomes and can point to specific examples of how your work moved the needle.
• People management. You have some formal line‑management experience and are ready to grow a product function. You do not need five years at Head level, but you should already be managing or coaching product people and be confident leading recruitment for the function as it scales.
• Technical fluency. You are comfortable discussing architecture, APIs, data flows, and system complexity with engineers. You do not need to be a developer, but you need to be a credible voice in the conversations with engineering leadership when making trade‑off decisions about technical debt, platform investment, and delivery approach.
• SaaS product thinking. You think in terms of adoption, retention, and value delivery. You use customer insight, data, and experimentation to guide decisions. You are outcome‑focused rather than output‑driven.
• Agile delivery. You have deep practical experience with agile product development, including backlog management, user story writing, sprint planning, and working with OKR frameworks. You have worked across multiple teams in parallel and know how to manage dependencies without creating bottlenecks.
• Communication. You are a strong communicator, both written and verbal, with the ability to influence at all levels. You can make product strategy legible to engineers, executives, and clients alike.
• Growth‑stage comfort. You are comfortable operating in a scaling, investment‑backed environment where priorities can shift, processes are still being built, and ambiguity is part of the job. You see this as an opportunity rather than a frustration.
• Nice to have. Experience with data products, insight platforms, or B2B SaaS aimed at professional decision makers is a strong plus but not essential. Familiarity with higher education, student accommodation, or property sectors would help you ramp faster but we would trade domain knowledge for stronger product and leadership capability every time.
• International expansion. Experience supporting or leading product efforts through international expansion is relevant given our growth into Europe and the US.

What We Offer

• A genuine leadership role with a pathway to VP Product.
• Opportunity to build out and codify the product function in collaboration with the CTO, direct influence on product strategy at a company going through a significant growth phase.
• A collaborative, remote‑first culture with regular team meetups.
• Flexible working.
• The chance to shape products that serve millions of students and the institutions that support them.