Head of Product Operations

Job Description

The Head of Product Operations owns how product investment is prioritized across the portfolio, how new AI-powered products are introduced and qualified for release, and how the organization measures whether what we ship is actually working. You'll build the function from a small existing team plus two specialist hires, set the standards the rest of the product organization works to, and serve as a strategic partner to the Chief Product Officer.

This is not a roadmap-administration role. It's a senior leadership seat with real decision-making authority over what ships, when, and at what level of capability.

What you'll own

• Stand up Product Operations as a horizontal function serving the full product portfolio, integrating an existing team with two specialist hires you will make.
• Own the New Product Introduction process end-to-end for every AI-powered product we ship: chair the stage-gate reviews (concept → pilot → general availability), and the re-entry reviews that qualify a product for expanded capability levels. Hold single-decision-maker authority on whether a product is ready to ship, including against commercial pressure.
• Own the capability-tier framework that defines how AI-powered products earn increasing levels of operational responsibility over time — from informational support to assisted decision-making to supervised execution — and the criteria for moving between tiers.
• Own portfolio prioritization across the product organization, with a defensible framework for impact and readiness, and maintain a single source of truth for what the org is working on.
• Own product trust and safety governance: containment of impact when things go wrong, rollback readiness, and the auditability of how AI-powered products reach their recommendations.
• Enforce ownership discipline for every shipped AI product: every product has a named accountable owner, a named quality owner, a named exception handler, and a named customer success partner before it goes live.
• Serve as a strategic thought partner to the CPO, and as the credible voice for the function in leadership and board conversations.
• Hire and lead the two-three person team, and operate as the bench for both reports during the first 12 months as the function matures.

What success looks like in 6 months

• Product Operations established. The team is in place, both specialist reports are hired or have offers out, and the rest of the organization knows what to bring to Product Ops vs. what to keep inside their team.

• The NPI process is operational. You've chaired at least three stage-gate reviews for AI-powered products in the portfolio. Gate criteria are written down, calibrated against the first two reviews, and used consistently. At least one review has resulted in a hold or a capability-tier adjustment — meaning the gate has teeth.

• The capability-tier framework is in use. Every shipped AI product has a declared capability tier on record. At least one product has formally re-entered NPI to request progression to the next tier, and the framework handled it without ad-hoc invention.

• Learning across products is visibly compounding. Patterns captured in production are being up-streamed into platform capability; you can show specific examples where the second product to ship benefited from the first product's experience.

• Portfolio prioritization is running. A single source of truth exists for what the product organization is working on, used in at least one quarterly investment review with the CPO.

• You've defended your investment recommendations to leadership. The CPO and leadership see you as the credible voice for prioritization decisions

Qualifications

What we're looking for

• 8+ years in product, product operations, or program leadership, including standing up central systems, NPI processes, or release-governance functions at scaling enterprise software companies.
• Demonstrated ownership of a stage-gate or release-governance process for a complex multi-product portfolio.
• Credibly fluent in LLM-based products: tool use, evaluation frameworks, telemetry, safety constraints, autonomy boundaries — enough to govern this kind of work credibly, not to build it.
• The instinct to find the line between chaos and bureaucracy when setting up processes — comfort with structure, allergy to ceremony.
• Backbone. You will routinely tell product and engineering leaders that a product cannot ship yet, and you will be right more often than wrong.
• Manufacturing, ERP, or enterprise SaaS experience is a meaningful plus.

Additional Information

• Your health and well being are important to us at QAD. We provide programs that help you strike a healthy work-life balance.
• Opportunity to join a growing business, launching into its next phase of expansion and transformation.
• Collaborative culture of smart and hard-working people who support one another to get the job done.
• An atmosphere of growth and opportunity, where idea-sharing is always prioritized over level or hierarchy.