VP of Product
Summary
We are looking for a VP of Product to lead the company’s Product Management and Design teams. The core responsibility of this role is to craft and drive roadmaps across all core product lines at Surfline. You’ll partner with senior leadership stakeholders to craft and execute on the product vision with a conviction-driven approach that is grounded in research and data, and a deep understanding of our consumers’ needs. You’ll inspire belief and align your team and other stakeholders around a unified strategic direction, while supporting your team to drive best-in-class product and design execution and partnering with leaders in engineering to deliver robust scaled solutions. While you will further build, manage, and develop the overarching product organization, you should have entrepreneurial roots and still be capable of executing in scrappy ways. The ideal VP of Product will have excellent people and organizational skills and have seen complexity at both growth stage and scale.
Under Surfline’s “Work from Anywhere” policy, this position may be performed on a full-time remote basis from California or a variety of locations in the US.
What You'll Do:
- Vision & Strategy. Serve as a partner to CEO to craft product vision and champion product direction for both the product organization and the company overall. Set the pace and tone for delivering product-led growth and an innovative and pioneering platform that leverages Surfline's proprietary capabilities and position in the surfing world. Your product strategy should further cement Surfline’s position as the industry leader and drive trajectory changing commercial outcomes.
- Collaborate. Working with peers in Strategy, Innovation, Monetization, Marketing, Engineering, Finance, Growth, Forecast, Operations (Cams), and Content you’ll implement an effective product and design organizational structure that balances process, accountability, and scalability with product velocity. Oversee large, cross-functional initiatives bringing together multiple stakeholders, aligning priorities, and driving key business decisions.
- Product Roadmap. Develop and own the product roadmap. Continually assess the feature mix and feature strategy, optimizing for subscriber revenue growth outcomes and for both the long-term strategic needs of the business and near-term scalability and speed. Lead prioritization and balance ongoing interdependencies of the company’s product experience stakeholder groups, then prioritize the development schedule of features and functionality in line with company goals.
- Product Management Fundamentals. Establish and drive strong product management processes (e.g. discovery, roadmapping, research, prioritization, delivery, analytics, feedback) to achieve and further the vision and mission of the Company.
- Craft. You obsess over defining and solving customer problems. You have strong product intuition and you’ve honed this intuition by running many experiments in your product management career. You will use this intuition to guide the team to speedy lessons-learnt and short time-to-impact. You have a high bar for consumer experiences and can deliver high-leverage feedback to accelerate learnings across the team. You have experience navigating multiple customer segments without creating common denominator experiences. You interpret qualitative and quantitative data and transform them into key insights to learn from and build better solutions.
- Leadership. Lead the Product and Design organization while executing with good judgment, processes, and data-driven decision-making. Create the best Product team for a scaling consumer subscription business working at the intersection of consumer, data science and hardware. You’ll have the right mix of industry experience, and fluency of the customer challenges, with a deep passion for navigating the surfing and-or other lifestyle ecosystem. You’ll build a team that balances diligence of running a scaling business, while learning quickly to build the right solutions.
- Learning and Development. Create a learning-based organization that will continue to grow and flourish, enhancing the skills and abilities of the team. Develop and oversee team members’ career progression through hands-on management.
- Culture. Ensure team members are excited to go to work every day, ready to produce results and make a positive difference in the world. Architect, codify, and continue to improve the team member journey from recruiting to onboarding to thriving at Surfline. Be part of the collective voice of the company on the executive team. Formally and informally solicit cultural input from across the organization. Develop company rituals and programs to deepen team member engagement.
- Inspire and Enlist. Work with and inspire a group of incredibly smart, mission-driven people across the company, and on the product team, giving them tools, mentorship, and motivation to innovate and make decisions to support the vision of the company.
- Allocate. Support and allocate resources for an effective organizational structure that balances process, accountability, and scalability with product velocity and innovation as the company scales.
- Strategize. Develop the product strategy and be held accountable for maintaining enough resources (time, people, money) to achieve the roadmap set forth within your direct teams, while serving as a thought partner and driver for proper allocation of resources in adjacent teams.
What We're Looking For:
- Years. 10+ years of product leadership experience preferred, working on industry leading consumer products, some of those years should intersect lifestyle understanding and experience.
- Product. 6+ years in a leadership or management role preferred, overseeing teams of product managers.
- Technical Acumen. Ability to understand complex technical requirements, some experience in computer science preferred.
- Team. Ability to build and directly lead a robust team of product managers and designers, while collaborating with adjacent stakeholder groups and technologists (e.g. data scientists, machine learning, data engineering, engineers, & product experience stakeholders) of at least 50 people.
- High Growth Period. Previous experience working inside innovative, high-growth company environments trying to disrupt the status quo; startup and-or zero-to-one product experience is highly preferred. Demonstrated trajectory changing growth outcomes through your work.
- Project Management. Expert understanding of the project lifecycle processes with previous ground-up, implementation experience. This includes an expert understanding of initiation, requirements gathering, analysis and design, development tools and technologies, release and version control, contemporary testing methodologies, and deployment management.
- Tracking. Experience developing dashboards and key metrics to track the business and inform strategy. Firm grasp on the interconnected relationship between product and design-engineering-data teams with strong thoughts on how best to manage projects and teams effectively.
- Executive. Exceptional leadership, management communication, and presentation skills with experience building-managing relationships with business customers at executive and senior management levels.
- Style, Player-Coach. Ability to meet deadlines and manage heavy workload, providing visibility into the workflow and portfolio. In this environment, you can easily shift from big-picture strategy to hands-on execution.
- Education. We don’t have any degree requirements, but we need a lifelong learner. A history of self-education on current product trends, enhanced knowledge on consumer ecosystem, and current product methodologies are expected.
You May Also Have:
- Global. Previous exposure or significant stakeholdership in the global-international execution of product experiences is a plus.
- Passion. Enthusiasm and interest in ocean-going activities, especially surfing.
Compensation and Benefits:
The base salary range for this position is: $200,000 - $250,000. In accordance with applicable state laws, the range provided is Surfline's reasonable estimate of the base compensation for this role. The actual amount may be higher or lower, based on non-discriminatory factors such as experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, and location. In addition, Surfline offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits package including 100% company-paid healthcare (medical, dental, and vision), a 401(k) plan and match, 'Use What You Need' PTO and more.
About Surfline Wavetrak:
Millions of people around the world depend on Surfline Wavetrak’s products to enrich their experiences in and around the ocean. Since 1985, our company has connected people with the ocean. Starting with surfers and expanding to offshore cruisers, anglers and a myriad of other ocean enthusiasts, we’ve made it our mission to deliver peak maritime experiences. We provide those who work and play in the ocean with all the advanced tools, personalized insights and immersive content to make their lives better -- supplying them with the information they need to make smarter decisions, seek out new experiences and gain valuable knowledge.
We are dedicated to bringing people together across the globe, and we champion and encourage those who bring different perspectives, ideas, and creativity. At Surfline Wavetrak, we recruit, employ, train, compensate, and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, disability, gender identity, gender expression, age, veteran status, and any other protected status.