Handbook: add VP of Product job description #5965

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title: "VP of Product"
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# VP of Product

## Job Description

The VP of Product reports to the CEO.

FlowFuse is building software that helps manufacturers and other industrial enterprises solve operational problems and scale those solutions across their businesses.

We are looking for a VP of Product to lead our next stage of product development. As our most senior product leader, you will own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap, building on our existing platform to define how new capabilities, modules, and products fit together.

This role requires both a clear view of where industrial software is going and the judgment to translate that vision into practical investment decisions. You will work directly with customers, our CTO and engineering team, and the solutions engineers and forward deployed engineers within our go-to-market organization.

### Product vision and strategy

Define a compelling direction for FlowFuse’s platform and product portfolio. Identify the enterprise customer problems we are best positioned to solve, establish priorities, and connect near-term delivery to a coherent long-term strategy.

### Product architecture and portfolio development

Determine how new features, modules, and products extend the existing platform. Partner with the CTO to establish shared capabilities, clear product boundaries, and extension points that support both reusable products and customer-specific solutions. Make deliberate decisions about what to build, integrate, or support through partners.

### Partnership with Engineering

Work closely with the CTO and engineering team to turn product strategy into well-defined, achievable plans. Bring clear customer problems, business context, and priorities, and involve engineers early in discovery and solution design. Make tradeoffs together around scope, sequencing, technical investment, and delivery commitments. Establish a shared understanding of success while giving Engineering the context and autonomy to determine how solutions are built.

### The connection between field delivery and product development

Establish a close working relationship with solutions engineering and forward deployed engineering within GTM. Use customer deployments to uncover recurring needs and test product opportunities. Own product investment decisions informed by customer value, repeatability, strategic fit, delivery effort, and ongoing maintenance.

Define a practical path for moving successful field-developed capabilities into supported products, including ownership, documentation, and lifecycle expectations.

### Enterprise customer needs

Build a deep understanding of how large industrial companies evaluate, deploy, govern, and expand software. Translate the needs of operational users, IT and OT teams, and executive buyers into product priorities. Account for integration, security, reliability, deployment flexibility, and rollout across multiple sites.

### Roadmap and execution

Turn strategy into a focused roadmap with clear outcomes and tradeoffs. Work closely with engineering to scope and deliver meaningful improvements, validate adoption, and adjust priorities as evidence develops.

### Commercial alignment and product leadership

Partner with the CEO and GTM leadership on positioning, packaging, and expansion opportunities. Build the product practices and team needed as the company grows, while remaining directly involved in discovery, product decisions, and delivery.

### What success could look like in your first year

* A clear product vision and portfolio strategy that guides investment decisions across the company.
* An agreed direction for extending the existing platform through shared capabilities, modules, and products.
* A consistent process for evaluating field-developed solutions and deciding what becomes supported product.
* Delivery of priority capabilities validated with enterprise customers and reused across deployments.
* Evidence that customers and field teams can deliver and expand solutions with less repeated development effort.
* Product measures that connect adoption and customer outcomes to deployment effort, reuse, and enterprise expansion.

## Skills

* Experience leading enterprise software products for manufacturing or other industrial markets, with a strong understanding of operational environments and complex buying organizations.
* A track record of evolving an established platform and building multiple products or solutions on shared foundations.
* The technical fluency to make informed product architecture decisions with engineering leadership, including tradeoffs around extensibility, integration, deployment, and maintainability.
* Evidence of turning customer-specific requirements into reusable capabilities adopted across customers.
* Strong commercial judgment about where standardization creates value and where customer-specific development remains appropriate.
* Experience guiding enterprise deployments from an initial use case toward broader adoption across teams, facilities, or business units.
* The ability to articulate a long-term vision, make difficult prioritization decisions, and remain close to day-to-day product work.
* Experience building and leading product teams, with the willingness to operate hands-on as the function develops.

Experience working directly with forward deployed engineers, solutions engineers, or a comparable customer delivery organization is particularly valuable. We are interested in the decisions you made together and the products that resulted.

## 90 Day Plan

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## Hiring Plan

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