Product Ops Manager - PM Experience

We’re looking for our next colleague - someone who can own, nurture and perfect how we work in Product Management at Pleo.

Product Operations is the latest best-practice in the world’s leading tech companies, providing the right data, tools, and streamlined processes and ways of working for our teams so they can focus on what matters most - building world-class products and awesome customer experiences. You will be identifying opportunities to drive operational excellence, building the processes, frameworks and ways of working for the world's greatest teams, and you’ll of course also take part in implementing the solutions from A to Z. Since Product Operations is a fairly new team at Pleo, there will be plenty of opportunities to take on varied projects, working across multiple teams and departments, not to mention having a direct influence on the future of the team.

Product Operations is a specialised unit that is cross functional in nature. To truly empower our teams, we need to understand the needs of the different parts of the organisation, not to mention how our teams work today and how we can improve on that. We need to understand how to best understand the needs of our customers and we need to understand how to best empower our teams so they can produce the greatest possible outcomes. You should therefore be a bit of a super-powered sponge, who absorbs all kinds of different inputs, and in turn, synthesise and analyse your way to scalable solutions.

This particular role will focus on creating an amazing Product Management Experience at Pleo. This includes the full experience from hiring to onboarding and all the way through to continual product management training and development.

This position will specifically own and advance our frameworks and ways of working that enable us to 1) hire great product managers with speed and quality, 2) onboard product managers into the product management competency and set them up for success and 3) build the next generation of product management training and career development frameworks. This may also include building out the community, creating new product management ceremonies and ultimately being responsible for a GREAT and holistic experience working as a product manager at Pleo.

We are around 40 people in the product management competence at Pleo and we expect to hire a lot more. You will be working closely with our Product Management and People leaders.

The role

We’re looking for a Product Operations Manager to join the team.

Product Operations at Pleo is new and by joining now, you will be able to not only help shape your own role as the team grows, you'll also have a direct impact on the growth and scope of the entire team. You will be working closely with and reporting to our Head of Product Operations and we will grow the team even further throughout 2022, so you'll quickly have more team members to collaborate with.

In this role, you will span across a wide range of projects that all aim to set new and existing product managers up for success so they can thrive and build world class customer experiences and create great outcomes.

Among other things, you will: 

• Own and develop our Product Management Hiring best practices and ensure we are enabled to hire great PMs with high quality and speed
• Own and develop our Product Management Onboarding programmes and support our product management and domain leaders setting their PMs up for success at Pleo
• Own and develop our Product Management Training and Development programmes to ensure our PMs grow in their competence and are equipped to continually create greater outcomes
• Own and develop ways of cross pollinating internally with teams, domains and competencies across the entire company, carrying the Product Management banner
• Own and develop ways of assessing product managers at Pleo, equipping our leaders and managers with high quality assessment frameworks
• Collaborate closely with the Product Operations team to maintain a central library of best practices within the Product Management Competency at Pleo
• Support and consult with our Product Managers on best practices
  
  

About you:

You must be detail-oriented with strong written and verbal communication skills. You are excited about empowering and enabling a growing organisation. You are able to craft a plan and build projects while focusing on day-to-day tactical goals and operate with a flexible mindset.

• You have hands-on experience in process management in cross-functional teams from start to finish.
• You have experience as a product manager and you know how product development works.
• You love learning new things and enjoy working with problem areas you aren't necessarily an expert in
• You are curious, technologically savvy and not afraid of getting hands-on in the details. You probably dismantled things as a child, to see how they worked. You want to know how things work!
• You have experience with working on larger cross functional projects
• You may have some consulting experience or worked within a fast growing start-up
• Knowledge of agile methodology and processes
• Extensive experience with project management and stakeholder management
• Ability to facilitate meetings and workshops without needing to dominate conversations is required
• You are great with people and at orchestrating larger initiatives and breaking them down into actionable chunks

Here are some of the key values we look for for the Product Operations team:

We are looking for - excellent communication and facilitation skills, being an enabler in workshops and meetings, and a strong focus on proactive and cross-functional collaboration. You should have an analytical mindset, with a strong ability to analyse what the problem truly is, while staying highly organised. Our team members need to quickly gain an end-to-end view of the business (understanding how information, tasks, and products move through the org), so the ability to create clean structures, workflows and processes is a must.  

A lot of organisations (especially ones that focus on speed or velocity, or are more output driven) have an allergy to Processes so there’s a certain amount of ‘letting go’ of your own bad experiences in dealing with inefficient or ill-fitting processes that’s required, and there’s a lot of behavior change required to create and roll out new organisation wide processes - if you’re not someone with a strong focus on, and reputation for building culture, you’ll have an uphill battle.

Show me the benefits! 

• Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending)
• Ability to work remotely (anywhere between the east coast of the Americas to European time zones)...
• ...or onsite if you want to (Copenhagen, London, Berlin, Madrid or Stockholm)
• Catered lunch in our offices, paid lunch if you prefer WFH ?
• 25 days of annual holidays, on top of the standardised festive and bank-related ones, of course
• A €2500 annual flex benefits package (maybe you want to buy additional holidays, pay for the gym, book a professional coach or pay part of your MBA - completely up to you!)
• Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we're supportive of families and help you feel that you don't have to compromise on the family due to work ??
• Loads of weird and wonderful niche communities to join in the company
• Trips abroad for team camps and fun
• Wild enthusiasm and encouragement from us if you want to host MeetUps, events, etc - we'll help (venue, food etc)|