Product Manager

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.
- You will be responsible for actively contributing to and executing Platform-as-a-Service’s product vision, strategy and roadmap. You will work alongside a talented, collaborative and supportive engineering pod maintaining the standard for engineering excellence at Xero. Your skilful product leadership and management of the pod’s backlog enables the pod to deliver compelling products and services that solve real problems for our customers.

**Success looks like**:

- You have a clear understanding of Xero’s strategic priorities and how your products and services align to it. You have articulated a compelling product vision that the pod pursues with missionary zeal. They know what’s important, how they are contributing, and why what they’re doing matters.
- Product and engineering are considered side-by-side: They are all involved in product discovery. Your skill in modern product discovery practices enables the pod to understand and use many experimental techniques.
- You and the pod actively seek out metrics to validate a hypothesis and measure results. You enable the pod to instrument their work so they immediately understand how their products are being used and ultimately whether customer and business value is being created.
- You have brought your customers and pod closer together: The pod obsesses over customers. They engage directly with them and get product ideas from observing customer struggles, and analysing customer data.
- You have built healthy relationships with your stakeholders. Key stakeholders are involved in product discovery activities; and all stakeholders are updated appropriately on product releases and roadmaps.
- The boundaries of your products (what the pod owns, what they don’t, and even the grey areas) are articulated and understood inside and outside of the pod.
- You and the pod have built a compelling portfolio of products and services that your customers value.

**Skills & Experience**:

- Proven experience championing strategic priorities and helping others relate to and align with it.
- Proven Product Leadership experience — with a toolbox of modern product discovery practices to draw upon.
- Proven experience using a range of metrics to monitor the success and health of products and services. Proven experience of making evidence-based decisions.
- A solid track record of addressing customer needs with experience connecting teams closer with customers (and not just being a proxy for them).
- Excellent stakeholder management skills. Proven experience building meaningful, collaborative relationships across all levels of the business.
- Proven experience advocating for and evangelising a product or service with customers and stakeholders.
- Proven experience leading a team through influencing and persuasion, without formal authority; and communicating meaningful direction.
- Proven ability to create clarity for a team — with an organised work style that is structured, rigorous and consistent.
- Proven experience working with innovative software development projects at scale.

**What you'll bring with you**:

- Communicating the vision & strategy. Keeps Xero’s vision and strategy at the forefront of decision-making and actions. Communicates and helps others understand the importance of the vision and strategy.
- Great communication skills. Speaks and writes clearly and articulately without being overly verbose or talkative, and relying on jargon.
- Your growth mindset. Understands that competency is not fixed but is enhanced through dedication and hard work. Demonstrates a love of learning and resilience to adversity that is essential for great accomplishment.
- High EQ. Is self-aware, self-regulated, motivated and empathetic with great interpersonal skills.
- Product management. Knowledgeable in product management. Has a toolkit of modern product discovery practices to draw upon.

Why you should join us:

- Xero is continuing to grow and so are the opportunities to join us
- You can choose to perform this role: In one of our #beautiful offices OR Flexibly, through a hybrid of in office and remote working styles
- OR Permanently remote from anywhere in NZ.
- Life Insurance (life cover, trauma cover, income Protection)
- Health Insurance (Southern Cross Wellbeing 2)
- 8 Xtra days of annual leave (on top of your 4 weeks of annual leave)
- Employee Share P