Head of Product Development

Accountabilities

• Own the complete product development lifecycle, from identifying customer needs and opportunities through product specification, manufacturing, launch, pricing, and post-launch performance.
• Build and maintain a detailed understanding of target customers, including purchase motivations, customer segments, purchase occasions, price and quality perceptions, trust signals, complaints, and return drivers.
• Use customer reviews, search behavior, social media, surveys, interviews, concept testing, and pricing research to generate actionable product insights and continuously validate assumptions.
• Define and prioritize the new product pipeline, determining which opportunities should move forward, wait, or be discontinued based on customer and commercial evidence.
• Own product and offer design decisions, including materials, construction, specifications, packaging, sizing, color assortment, and market positioning.
• Manage product development with overseas factories and manufacturing partners, including specifications, samples, quality standards, and production requirements.
• Monitor live products and lead continuous improvement initiatives, investigating negative feedback to identify root causes and determining when products should be redesigned, relaunched, expanded, or discontinued.
• Establish a results-oriented feedback loop comparing launch forecasts and assumptions with actual product performance and using those learnings to improve future decisions.
• Balance pricing, product costs, and expected margins when evaluating product and offer opportunities.
• Lead and develop the product analysts and sourcing/production coordinator, set priorities, review their work, and raise the overall quality and effectiveness of the team.
• Guide the development and use of research and scoring tools, including AI-supported workflows, while maintaining appropriate human oversight and validation.

Requirements:

• Demonstrated experience developing and launching at least three physical consumer products sold to US consumers, with ownership of customer insights, product and offer decisions, and commercial results.
• Experience launching at least one product primarily through an online channel, such as direct-to-consumer, Amazon, or another marketplace.
• At least five years of experience within a consumer products company, brand, or retailer serving US consumers.
• Evidence of making difficult product decisions based on customer insights, including having stopped, redesigned, or challenged a product or concept because of research or customer feedback.
• Strong understanding of customer research methodologies, including interviews, surveys, concept testing, pricing tests, review analysis, and social listening, as well as the strengths and limitations of each approach.
• Strong understanding of how US consumers evaluate products online, including imagery, reviews, ratings, pricing and price anchors, comparisons, and social proof.
• Hands-on product development expertise covering specifications, materials, samples, quality standards, and manufacturing relationships, including overseas production.
• Strong commercial judgment and the ability to evaluate price, cost, margin, customer value, and product quality together.
• Experience leading at least three people, with a demonstrated ability to improve the quality and effectiveness of their work.
• Practical experience using AI tools in research or product development, combined with appropriate human review and validation.
• Excellent written English and the ability to communicate product insights, decisions, specifications, and recommendations clearly and precisely.
• Comfortable working in a fully remote environment with required overlap from 9 AM to 1 PM US Eastern Time, while maintaining flexibility outside those hours.
• This role is specifically focused on physical consumer products; backgrounds centered exclusively on software or digital product management, marketing or brand management without product ownership, sourcing or merchandising without customer and offer ownership, or product development exclusively for non-US markets are not aligned with the role.

Benefits:

• Fully remote position.
• Flexible working schedule outside the required 9 AM–1 PM Eastern Time overlap.
• Direct reporting relationship with the CEO and significant visibility within the organization.
• End-to-end ownership of product development and commercial outcomes.
• Opportunity to shape a newly created product development function and establish its processes, tools, and standards.
• Leadership responsibility for a dedicated product and sourcing/production team.
• Opportunity to work across customer research, product development, manufacturing, pricing, and commercial strategy.
• Ability to use and shape AI-supported research and product development workflows.
• International exposure through collaboration with overseas manufacturing partners.
• Compensation and additional benefits to be determined according to the local employment package.