Chief of Staff - Chief Product Officer

SharkNinja•Needham, MA

11h•$220,000 - $295,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Chief of Staff, Product Development serves as the operating and strategic backbone of SharkNinja’s Product Development organization — a ~480-person, multi-category, globally distributed function. Reporting directly to the Chief Product Officer (CPO), this role is not administrative or coordinative in nature; it is a force-multiplier role designed to extend the CPO’s reach, protect their strategic focus, and ensure that the organization executes with the discipline, velocity, and clarity that SharkNinja’s growth demands. The CoS translates the CPO’s vision into operating reality. They own the rhythm of the business, surface and resolve cross-functional friction before it escalates, and build the infrastructure that allows a complex, fast-moving product organization to operate as one coherent system. Beyond core operating responsibilities, this role carries three strategic ownership areas that sit at the intersection of growth and product leadership: geographic expansion (translating global market priorities into product and resourcing decisions), cross-category loyalty program development (from architecture through consumer experience), and CPO-level strategy management (ensuring the organization’s strategic bets remain legible, current, and executed). This role requires exceptional judgment, political intelligence, and the ability to hold complexity without being consumed by it. SharkNinja is entering a period of significant product-led transformation. This role is critical to ensuring the new CPO lands with speed and impact — and that the organization builds the operating model capable of sustaining the next phase of growth.

Requirements

7–12+ years of experience in strategic operations, chief of staff, management consulting, or product/engineering leadership; prior Chief of Staff experience strongly preferred.
Demonstrated track record operating as a trusted partner to a C-suite or ELT-level executive in a complex, fast-moving organization.
Strong working knowledge of consumer product development, hardware/software roadmaps, or engineering operations; experience in or exposure to geographic market expansion and consumer loyalty program development strongly preferred.
Exceptional ability to synthesize complexity into clear, executive-ready communications and decisions.
Proven ability to influence cross-functional alignment without formal authority.
High emotional intelligence; politically aware, discreet, and trusted with sensitive information.
Experience in a high-growth, multi-category consumer product company strongly preferred.
Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
Demonstrated experience applying AI tools, automation, or data analytics within a strategic operations or executive support context.
Hands-on familiarity with AI-powered project and portfolio management platforms, executive intelligence tools, or LLM-based workflow automation.
Comfort operating in an AI-augmented workflow — using intelligent tools to synthesize signals, surface insights, and support faster, higher-quality decisions.
Track record of championing AI or digital tool adoption within a cross-functional team, including managing change and building capability.
Strategic vision for how generative AI and intelligent automation can reshape the operating model of a product organization — from reporting to portfolio tradeoff modeling.
Proactively follows up on action items without being prompted; owns outcomes, not just process.
Asks incisive, clarifying questions rather than proposing premature solutions.
Brings options, tradeoffs, and implications to the CPO — not just problems.
Builds trust and relationships laterally, not just upward.
Comfortably challenges leaders when priorities drift from strategy; demonstrates bias toward clarity and focus.
Demonstrates calm authority and decisive action under ambiguity and pressure.
Designs durable mechanisms that scale — not workarounds that require their continued presence.

Nice To Haves

Prior Chief of Staff experience strongly preferred.
Experience in or exposure to geographic market expansion and consumer loyalty program development strongly preferred.
Experience in a high-growth, multi-category consumer product company strongly preferred.
MBA or advanced degree preferred.

Responsibilities

Serve as the CPO’s primary operating partner; own the rhythm of the business including staff meetings, QBRs, leadership offsites, Board prep, and ELT reviews.
Synthesize inputs across the Product Development organization into crisp, decision-ready executive materials and pre-reads.
Monitor and manage the CPO’s strategic agenda; ensure priorities are reflected consistently across the organization and protected from coordination drift.
Identify and resolve cross-functional friction early, before it escalates to the CPO or requires executive intervention.
Represent the CPO’s perspective in senior forums, cross-functional meetings, and planning sessions when delegation is appropriate.
Leverage AI tools to synthesize portfolio signals, surface strategic risks, and equip the CPO with faster, higher-quality decision support.
Drive annual roadmap, dollarization, and long-range planning processes across product categories in partnership with Finance and Product leadership.
Maintain visibility across the full strategic initiative landscape; surface misalignments between strategy, roadmap, and resourcing and bring recommendations to the CPO.
Partner with Finance and HR on horizon 1–3 investment planning, headcount strategy, and org design decisions.
Champion targeted tool investments tied to operating visibility, roadmap confidence, or decision-making speed.
Deploy AI-enhanced portfolio intelligence to surface roadmap risks, prioritization tradeoffs, and resource gaps earlier and with greater precision.
Actively unblock cross-functional issues across Product, Operations, Finance, and Legal.
Facilitate alignment on roadmap tradeoffs, investment priorities, and strategic decisions without relying on authority.
Incubate and oversee net-new programs and initiatives tied to enterprise strategic objectives as assigned by the CPO.
Build deep, trusted working relationships across the PD leadership team, ELT peers, and key functional partners.
Ensure cross-functional stakeholders have the context and clarity needed to execute against shared priorities.
Own the CPO’s cross-category geographic expansion agenda; translate global market entry priorities into product decisions, resourcing, and roadmap sequencing in partnership with regional and commercial leadership.
Identify and size geo expansion opportunities across SharkNinja’s 32 global markets; surface white space, assess market readiness, and build the analytical case that connects geo growth to product investment decisions.
Lead the development and operationalization of SharkNinja’s cross-category loyalty strategy; define the program architecture, align stakeholders across Product, Marketing, and Commercial, and drive execution from concept to consumer experience.
Serve as the strategic thought partner and program manager for high-priority, cross-category initiatives that require CPO-level sponsorship but dedicated day-to-day ownership — including loyalty program development, consumer insight infrastructure, and post-purchase engagement strategy.
Build and maintain a living CPO strategy document that integrates geo expansion priorities, loyalty program milestones, and cross-category bets — ensuring the CPO’s strategic intent is legible, current, and actionable across the organization.
Partner with the HRBP on org health assessments, headcount strategy, succession planning, and structural recommendations.
Identify structural gaps, level compression, and span-of-control issues; surface findings with recommendations to the CPO.
Support onboarding of new leaders into the PD org; ensure fast connectivity to strategy, culture, and operating model.
Flag talent and leadership gaps that create execution risk against strategic objectives.
Contribute to culture-setting within the organization, especially during periods of leadership transition and transformation.
Own and continuously evolve executive reporting: dashboards, initiative trackers, pre-reads, and planning artifacts.
Build standardized operating cadences across the PD org — staff meetings, roadmap reviews, offsites, and decision logs.
Continuously identify opportunities to raise the signal-to-noise ratio and reduce coordination overhead for the CPO.
Design mechanisms that scale beyond this role — not workarounds that create dependency on one person.
Lead the evaluation and adoption of AI and automation tools that improve planning accuracy, reporting speed, and portfolio visibility across the organization.