Director, Product Operations

About the Product Ops Team

The Product Operations team provides contextual feedback across Thumbtack to understand how we can better attract, engage, and retain professionals and customers on the Thumbtack platform. This fast-paced team uses a combination of proactive outreach and user-driven approaches to collect, track, prioritize, and size user feedback and bugs to meet our core objective of improving user sentiment and engagement.

About the Role

You’ll lead the Product Operations team, setting the vision, and carefully tracking progress, as we work to capture our most important user voices and feedback, partnering closely with leaders in Product, Marketing, and Operations. You’ll also work to help build the team, maintain high engagement, and guide the team’s planning and execution.

Responsibilities

• Create the vision for the team: You’ll guide the team as it creates and delivers on a vision for Product Operations that drives actionable user insight - from our Voice of User and Product Sentiment programs, to product launch feedback tracking, to user advocacy and product quality through bug reportings.
• Give voice to our most important users. Guide the systems and processes that help us understand and share product feedback to evaluate whether products and features are having the impact they were designed to have, solve the problems they were designed to solve, and whether messaging is resonating with users as intended. This includes team efforts to consistently and reliably deliver enlightening impact sizing reports. 
• Improve our roadmaps. Distill qualitative data into concise and impactful stories that represent the needs, desires, and pains of the user. Proven ability to get projects on the product roadmap by leveraging good analysis, powerful storytelling, strong relationships, and organizational savvy. 
• Build alignment and visibility for the team. Product Operations is a highly cross-functional team. You’ll work carefully with your team and with partners and leaders across the org to align the team’s resources with our most important strategic opportunities and to make sure insights and reports are actionable and visible to those who can use them, often in Product and Marketing. 
• Improve the practice and our systems. Help us improve our team processes, tools, and systems, including our short and longer-term technical roadmaps (often working closely with our technical project management team when new tools or updates are needed)
• Build trust. Become a thought leader and credible resource across the organization through the high standards and ambitions you hold for yourself and your team. Align team strengths and interests with team and company needs over time. 
• Lead with engagement. Foster and maintain the trust and engagement of the team, as well as that of key leaders and collaborators across the company.

Must-Have Qualifications

If you don't think you meet all of the criteria below but still are interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box, and we're looking for someone excited to join the team.

• 5+ years experience leading teams in product operations, product development or design, or other relevant fields
• Experience building systems to track user insight and sentiment and seize opportunities at the enterprise level
• Deep experience using open-ended customer data to craft narratives around what matters most and influence strategy over time
• Experience working with and building technical and program roadmaps to guide customer sentiment, voice of user, or related programs
• Exceptional presentation and communication skills
• Effective, collaborative leader, who can manage multiple projects and deadlines in a fast-paced, team environment, with high engagement and teamwork
• Bachelor’s Degree in relevant field, or the equivalent, additional professional experience

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Advanced degree in a relevant discipline, or additional years of industry and team leadership experience
• Experience guiding technical roadmaps for feedback at scale
• Relevant experience working with other marketplaces or in the home or services industries

Thumbtack is a virtual-first company, meaning you can live and work from any one of our approved locations across the United States, Canada or the Philippines*. When it is safe to gather, we will begin to host in-person events on a regular basis. Remote employees will be expected to travel occasionally for these events to a Thumbtack library or offsite team-building location. In cities with 5+ employees, we are establishing local communities, where employees can gather for local events. Additionally, employees in the San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Toronto and Manila areas will have opt-in access to communal workspace at one of our Thumbtack libraries. We always prioritize the health and safety of our employees. Currently, participation in these events and Thumbtack library use are optional. Both require employees to be fully vaccinated.

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