Director of Product Job Description Template

The director of product leads a group of product managers and owns strategy across several related areas. The role shifts from doing product management to building the conditions in which other people do it well, which means hiring, process, prioritization frameworks and the connection between product decisions and commercial results. The common failure is a director who keeps doing the individual contributor work and leaves the team without direction.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities

• Lead a team of product managers and own their development
• Set product strategy across a group of related areas
• Own the prioritization process and its fairness
• Hire and onboard product managers
• Establish product practices including discovery and measurement standards
• Work with engineering leadership on capacity and sequencing
• Represent product to executives and to customers
• Own commercial outcomes for the product group
• Resolve conflicts between teams and competing priorities
• Contribute to company level strategy

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in business, computer science or a related field

Required Skills and Experience

• 8+ years in product with 2+ managing product managers
• Track record of products delivered with commercial impact
• Experience hiring and developing product managers
• Ability to set strategy rather than only execute a roadmap
• Strong stakeholder management at executive level
• Analytical rigour about outcomes
• Clear communication of strategy and trade offs
• Experience partnering closely with engineering leadership

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience scaling a product organization
• Background in the relevant market or domain