Director of Product Operations

First Due

8d•Remote

About The Position

This is a rare opportunity to build a product operations function from the ground up inside a fast-growing, mission-critical SaaS company at exactly the moment when that infrastructure matters most. First Due is in the middle of a significant transformation — new systems, new processes, new product development methodology, and aggressive growth goals — all happening simultaneously. The person who takes this role will be the connective tissue that makes it all hold together. Reporting to the SVP Product, the Director of Product Operations will own the operating system of the product organization. That means two things in parallel: supporting the internal mechanics of how product is built — process, cadence, tooling, and the AIPDLC workflow — and owning the operational bridge between product and the rest of the business — go-to-market readiness, data and analytics, cross-functional alignment, and the systems that generate the product signals that drive our roadmap decisions. This is not a coordinator role or a program management role. It is a senior leadership position for someone who has seen what great product operations looks like, has the technical fluency to operate inside an AI-enabled development environment, and has the organizational savvy to work effectively across engineering, product, customer success, and commercial teams. The right person will be doing the work themselves on day one and building the team behind them over time. A note on the AIPDLC First Due has replaced traditional agile with a proprietary AI Product Development Life Cycle — a series of AI agents, structured ceremonies, and cross-functional workflows that has delivered 4–10x productivity improvements in product development time. The Director of Product Operations will be a key steward of this process — not just maintaining it but evolving it, instrumenting it, and ensuring it connects cleanly to the commercial and customer signals that should be driving our roadmap.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in product operations, product management, technical program management, or a closely related function inside a SaaS company — with at least 3 years operating at a Senior or Director level.
Genuine fluency with AI tools (e.g. Cursor, Figma Make, Lovable, Claude, OpenAI GPT) and AI-enabled workflows — not as a user of AI features, but as someone who understands how to build, instrument, and improve processes that involve AI agents, LLMs, and automated workflows.
Demonstrated experience building product operations infrastructure from scratch or significantly rebuilding it inside a growing company — you have done this before and can show what you built.
Strong data and analytics capability — comfortable defining metrics, building dashboards, and working with data tools to create the visibility that product and executive leadership need to make good decisions.
Experience working inside or alongside agile, scaled agile, or AI-native product development methodologies — and the judgment to know when to follow the process and when to evolve it.
Excellent cross-functional operating skills — this role lives at the intersection of product, engineering, customer success, and commercial teams, and requires someone who builds trust and drives alignment across all of them.
Strong written and verbal communication — the ability to translate complex product operations topics for executive audiences, cross-functional partners, and the broader product team.
Experience in a PE-backed, high-growth SaaS environment where speed, accountability, and data-driven decision-making are the norms.

Nice To Haves

Experience in GovTech, public safety, or mission-driven SaaS — familiarity with government procurement, agency buying cycles, and the emotional weight of software that serves first responders.
Experience operating in a company going through significant systems transformation — ERP, CRM, or operational platform implementation alongside business growth.
Exposure to AI product development methodologies — experience with agent-based workflows, LLM integration in product processes, or AI-driven product management tools.
Familiarity with Jira, FullStory, Aha or other similar product platforms, and Salesforce, Rocketlane, Gong, Zendesk, or similar modern GTM and customer success platforms as they interface with product operations.
Experience supporting or owning OKR processes at the department or company level.

Responsibilities

Own the operating rhythm of the product organization — sprint and release cadence, ceremony structure, cross-functional meeting design, and the health of the AIPDLC workflow across all product modules.
Serve as the primary steward of AIPDLC process integrity — identifying friction points, driving continuous improvement, and ensuring that agents, ceremonies, and human workflows are functioning as designed.
Build and maintain the product operations playbook — onboarding frameworks, process documentation, decision rights, and escalation paths that give the product team clarity and speed.
Partner with engineering leadership to ensure development processes, capacity planning, and delivery cadences are aligned and visible across the organization.
Own tooling strategy and administration for the product organization — including roadmapping tools, project tracking, and the AI and automation infrastructure that underpins the AIPDLC.
Establish product quality and feedback loops – build systems to ensure product quality at scale, define what good looks like, instrument feedback loops across user behavior, usage, support (issue patterns), customers (qualitative signals), and drive root-cause analysis for recurring issues (not just symptom fixes).
Build and own the product data and analytics infrastructure — defining the metrics, dashboards, and reporting frameworks that give product leadership and the executive team real visibility into product performance, usage, adoption, and health.
Operate the signal and bug review process — work with product directors to ensure customer data from Gong, Zendesk, customer success, and other sources that feeds directly into roadmap prioritization and the AIPDLC workflow.
Partner with Revenue Operations and Customer Success to ensure product signals, customer feedback, and commercial data are flowing cleanly between functions and informing product decisions in a structured way.
Own the OKR infrastructure for the product organization — working with product executive and product leaders to ensure goals are clearly defined, tracked, and connected to company-level outcomes.
Serve as the operational bridge between product and customer success — ensuring implementation, support, and expansion teams have visibility into the roadmap and that their customer signals are reaching the right product leaders.
Drive cross-functional alignment on release planning, feature launches, and major product milestones — coordinating across product, engineering, marketing, and sales to ensure launches are planned, communicated, and executed effectively.
Partner with the sales leaders and marketing on product marketing infrastructure — ensuring the output of AIPDLC flows cleanly into sales enablement, positioning, and campaign content.
Help design and evolve the operating model for the product organization as it scales — including team structure recommendations, capacity planning, and the systems that support effective remote product development.
Build the function with a team-build mindset — documenting what you own, hiring and onboarding future team members, and building processes that are designed to be delegated rather than dependent on a single person.
Serve as a thought partner to the product executive and leaders on organizational health, process maturity, and the capabilities the product org needs to develop as the company continues its rapid growth.