Director Product - Platform & Identity

About the Role

As a Director of Product, you will lead multiple product teams and step in to solve complex and protracted product problems. You will support and enable your team to do the best work of their lives through practicing the great people leader framework. Your impact will be measured by your achievement of key commercial and customer success metrics through your management of people and teams.

As the Director of Product, Identity and Platform, you will lead the strategy and execution of several products that underpin almost every product component at Xero. This role is highly strategic with significant executive and customer visibility. You will set the vision and ambition for Xero’s growth into larger medium-sized businesses, strategically identify platform improvements, design innovative solutions, and collaborate with teams to execute the vision. You will also grapple with how AI is going to change customer needs and product solutions to future-proof Xero, playing a critical role in re-defining product management in the age of AI.

You’ll work cross-functionally with design, engineering, GTM, compliance teams, and horizontally across product areas. You’ll lead a team of 6 product managers initially, with room to grow scope significantly for a strong performer. In this role, you’ll drive innovation and execution across identity, authentication/authorization, fraud detection, and platform reliability and stability, including areas such as granular user permissions, login (MFA, SSO, passkeys), customer due diligence platform, AI agent identity, and back-end organizational and user platforms.

Responsibilities

Product

• Be accountable for all product management responsibilities at a product area level, including:
  • Network across Xero to ensure products within the portfolio connect to Xero’s strategy, objectives, and future.
  • Develop trusting relationships with senior-level stakeholders to drive actionable outcomes.
  • Articulate a narrative to diverse senior stakeholders to influence outcomes.
• Be accountable for product management at portfolio/sub-portfolio level, including:
  • Understand the Xero context, map the landscape, and identify value streams for collaboration or dependencies.
  • Define customer vision and long-term future state, illustrating the impact on customers' lives.
  • Define scope and approach, including big bets, value drops, and outcomes over time.
  • Develop a support strategy and plan, creating low-fidelity solution concepts to explore and de-risk assumptions.
  • Create high-level concepts to demonstrate the ideal future experience as a north-star aspiration.
  • Align with Customer teams on launch timing, approach, and messaging based on the Customer Value Proposition.
  • Run through launch checklists for new products or features.
  • Nurture iterative product improvements and lifecycle management, continuously monitoring performance and customer feedback.
  • Manage risks related to security, privacy, regulatory change, compliance, accuracy, responsible data use, and availability.
  • Standardize and improve product practice, supporting practitioners to develop skills and grow.
  • Plan work, forecast milestones, and track progress against the plan.

People Leadership

• Enable your team to do the best work of their lives by shaping team vision, culture, and ways of working.
• Empower people to work autonomously, providing guidance, coaching, and mentorship.
• Actively engage with team members about their careers, manage performance, and support growth.
• Recruit and onboard new team members, ensuring cultural fit and high quality.
• Manage team compliance with Xero policies and processes.
• Role model exemplary leadership, upholding Xero values and developing leadership capabilities.
• Foster a safe environment for experimentation and learning.

Success Metrics

• Establish OKRs and ensure your team’s work contributes to achieving them.
• Deeply understand customers and their problems.
• Build strong relationships with stakeholders who are engaged and aligned with your vision, strategy, and roadmap.
• Maintain an accessible, transparent, prioritized, and well-executed roadmap focused on value for Xero and customers.
• Champion product initiatives, narratives, and vision, driving alignment across teams and the organization.
• Demonstrate significant people leadership experience, motivating individuals and teams while developing their capabilities.
• Ensure team members connect their work to the broader strategy.
• Act as an effective coach, asking important questions and facilitating difficult conversations.
• Execute the roadmap according to plan, focusing on the most important initiatives.
• Support your team in removing barriers.
• Build inclusive, resilient, and psychologically safe teams.
• Collaborate internationally to create horizontal alignment across Xero.
• Demonstrate and amplify Xero’s values.

Requirements

• Deep domain expertise in the following areas:
  • Technical platform product experience.
  • Demonstrated experience collaborating with diverse and senior stakeholder groups to realize customer/commercial outcomes, particularly cross-functionally and horizontally across product teams.
  • AI fluency: cutting-edge understanding of using AI to improve workflows and the product development lifecycle, with curiosity and hunger to experiment and iterate.
• Extensive experience in implementing new and improved approaches to product practice.
• Proven ability to drive strategic priorities and help others align with them.
• Strong track record of addressing customer needs through innovative use of technology.
• Effectively influenced outcomes at all levels in various contexts.
• Extensive experience in defining product roadmaps and long-term planning at a portfolio/sub-portfolio level.
• Experience within industry sectors relevant to Xero.
• Previous experience at a Senior Manager level.
• Proven people leadership and ability to successfully motivate individuals and teams.
• Extensive experience managing a large and/or complex global portfolio/sub-portfolio to deliver customer/business outcomes.
• Relevant graduate degree (preferably in a technology or business-related field).

Skills

Love Customer Problems

• Leads others in using best-practice user research approaches to generate insights.
• Mentors others in problem definition and articulation techniques.
• Coaches others in creating MVPs/MLPs and incremental solution decisions.
• Supports others in running complex experiments to validate solution options.

Look To The Future

• Runs education sessions for teams on product/domain to increase knowledge across Xero.
• Mentors others to develop compelling product strategies and roadmaps aligning business and product interests.
• Pilots new systems supporting innovative ideas across product.

Work The Xero Way

• Leads a culture of courageous prioritization across teams and geographies.
• Refines and evolves Xero’s product management ways of working.
• Designs innovative release strategies to reduce lead time and impacts.

Demonstrate Commercial Acumen

• Develops new internal approaches and tools to identify and size markets/segments.
• Interrogates and validates product-market fit for commercial success.
• Drives Xero’s approach to product decision-making aligned with strategic priorities.

Do It Together

• Expertly facilitates improvised conversations with senior stakeholders, leading to actionable outcomes.
• Sets the standard in articulating narratives to influence diverse stakeholders.
• Establishes or improves cross-functional processes for exemplary product outcomes.

Explore The Data

• Coaches others in new analytical approaches to generate insights.
• Teaches others to translate information and insights for different stakeholders.
• Collaborates across functions to integrate information and generate meaningful insights.

Great People Leadership

• Connects team work to strategy and cascades the operating plan.
• Acts as a coach, asking good questions, listening, and helping remove barriers.
• Collaborates internationally to create horizontal alignment.
• Builds inclusive, resilient, and psychologically safe teams.
• Drives performance and results while growing people and careers.