Lead Product Manager - Contract

VML is a leading creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce, creating connected brands to drive growth. VML is celebrated for its innovative and award-winning human-first work for clients including AstraZeneca, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Ford, Microsoft, Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company, and Wendy's.

As Lead Product Manager, you will be accountable for translating business and customer needs into a clear product strategy and measurable outcomes. You will lead cross-functional teams through discovery, development, launch and continuous improvement, while building alignment across senior stakeholders, clients and delivery teams. This is a strategic leadership role, not solely a backlog-management position.

What you’ll be doing

• Product vision, strategy and roadmap: Own and communicate the product vision, strategy and long-term direction. Align the product strategy with organisational objectives, customer needs, commercial priorities and the wider strategy. Define the target customer, value proposition, product principles and strategic outcomes. Develop and maintain an outcome-focused product roadmap spanning multiple workstreams or product squads. Translate market insight, customer problems, operational needs and technology opportunities into clear product opportunities. Balance short-term delivery with longer-term platform capabilities, scalability, technical health and innovation. Lead product investment decisions and clearly articulate the expected customer and business value.
• Customer discovery and market leadership: Lead customer discovery, user research, journey mapping, problem definition and validation activities. Identify opportunities to improve workflows, efficiency, collaboration and visibility. Use customer insight, market research and competitive analysis to inform product decisions.
• Cross-functional leadership and delivery: Lead multidisciplinary teams across Product, Engineering, Architecture, UX/UI, Data, AI, Quality Assurance, Security and Operations. Provide clarity on the customer problem, desired outcomes, priorities and decision-making principles. Establish effective discovery and delivery practices across the product lifecycle. Ensure product teams have clear epics, requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria and measurable outcomes. Work closely with engineering teams to make pragmatic trade-offs between scope, quality, time, cost and technical risk. Maintain a healthy, prioritised backlog without losing sight of the wider product strategy. Identify and remove blockers, manage delivery risks and resolve cross-team dependencies. Lead release planning, readiness reviews, rollout planning and post-launch evaluation. Continuously improve product and delivery ways of working across the programme. Use Agile approaches pragmatically, including Scrum, Kanban and continuous discovery practices.
• Senior stakeholder and executive engagement: Act as the primary product representative for senior internal stakeholders, clients and programme governance forums. Communicate product strategy, progress, outcomes, risks, dependencies and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences. Build alignment across global, regional and functional stakeholders with competing priorities. Facilitate effective decision-making and provide recommendations when information is incomplete or ambiguous.
• Product leadership and capability development: Provide leadership, coaching and mentoring to Product Managers, Product Owners and cross-functional delivery teams. Set high standards for product discovery, prioritisation, communication, documentation and outcome measurement. Help establish and continuously improve the organisation’s product management practices and operating model. Create a culture of customer empathy, accountability, collaboration and continuous learning. Lead through influence, creating clarity and momentum even where you do not have direct authority. Represent and strengthen the product function across the wider organisation.

What we want from you

• You will bring significant experience in product management, with a proven track record of leading complex products from strategy through to delivery and adoption.
• Extensive experience as a Product Manager, Senior Product Manager or Lead Product Manager within a B2B/D2C Commerce or digital transformations.
• Demonstrable experience owning product strategy, roadmap, prioritisation and outcomes across complex products or platforms.
• Experience delivering workflow, project management, operations or back-office SaaS solutions.
• Proven experience leading greenfield product development, platform transformation or the replacement of legacy systems.
• Experience working across multiple product squads, delivery teams or interconnected workstreams.
• A track record of delivering measurable customer, operational or commercial outcomes—not just features or project milestones.
• Experience working with senior executives, enterprise clients and complex stakeholder groups.
• Experience operating effectively in a large, global organisation with formal governance and complex decision-making processes.
• Strong understanding of commerce ecosystems and online Customer Experience, preferably including agency operating models, workflows and client-service environments.
• Strong understanding of Agile, Lean and modern product management practices, including Scrum, Kanban, continuous discovery and outcome-based planning.
• Ability to move comfortably between strategic thinking, customer discovery, commercial planning and delivery detail.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, facilitation and influencing skills.
• Strong commercial awareness and the ability to connect product decisions to revenue, efficiency, customer value and organisational strategy.
• Excellent analytical, critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Confidence making decisions in ambiguous environments and managing complex trade-offs.
• Proven ability to lead, coach and motivate people through influence, with or without direct line-management responsibility.
• Highly organised, self-directed and comfortable taking ownership of significant initiatives.
• Resilient, pragmatic and able to maintain momentum in a fast-moving transformation programme.
• Comfortable using product and delivery tools such as Jira, Confluence, Aha!, Productboard or equivalent.

If you have some of this, even better

• A recognised Product Management or Agile Product Owner certification is desirable.

What we can offer you

Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are. Our culture thrives on our core values, designed for impact-driven individuals: Heart, Brains and Courage.

We lead with Heart, fostering empathy and trust where genuine connections and human-centric work flourish. We empower your Brains for innovation, valuing relentless curiosity and collaborative intelligence to solve complex challenges. And we champion Courage, inspiring you to speak up, embrace experimentation, and advocate for bold solutions that push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

WPP (VML) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.