Director, Product Strategy - EZRA

Ezra • New York, NY

15d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Product Strategy owns the upstream strategy layer for the company’s propositions — defining what we offer, why, and how it evolves. This is not a go-to-market execution role. It is a strategic leadership position focused on proposition vision, market intelligence, commercial frameworks, and portfolio performance that shape the product portfolio. Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer, you set the direction for a small, high-impact team and serve as the executive voice for product strategy across the organization. You translate market reality and company vision into a coherent strategic direction, ensuring the business builds the right things for the right reasons. With AI already embedded in the product portfolio and central to the roadmap, you bring direct experience with AI-powered products and the strategic fluency to read the evolving AI market, shape the AI proposition roadmap, and ensure the business stays ahead of the curve. You are comfortable operating upstream, holding clear scope boundaries, and influencing without needing to own downstream execution.

Requirements

• Strategic thinker who translates market signal into proposition direction — not a project manager
• Comfortable operating upstream without needing to own downstream execution
• Strong commercial instinct — pricing, packaging, competitive positioning
• Able to hold scope boundaries without alienating Product Marketing, Sales, or Solutions
• Proven people leadership with the ability to lead a small, high-performing team without needing a large organization to be effective
• Strong executive presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders, present to executive audiences, and represent a function at the leadership level
• Exceptional analytical and critical thinking skills, with the ability to synthesize complex, ambiguous information into clear strategic direction
• AI and technology fluency — experience with AI-powered products and the ability to read the AI market, assess strategic and commercial viability of AI propositions, and translate AI trends into roadmap direction
• Data-driven and metrics-fluent — comfortable defining KPIs, partnering on dashboard development, and holding a team accountable to product growth targets
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills with experience partnering across Product, Commercial, Sales, and Marketing functions
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, or a related field
• 10+ years of experience in product strategy, management consulting, business strategy, or related leadership roles
• Proven experience leading and developing strategic teams
• Experience partnering with C-level executives and influencing company-wide strategic decisions
• Direct experience with AI-powered products — either owning strategy for AI propositions or working closely with AI product teams; combined with the ability to read the broader AI market and translate trends into product direction

Nice To Haves

• MBA or advanced degree preferred
• Experience in a services-enabled-by-platform business strongly preferred; pure SaaS background alone is not ideal

Responsibilities

• Define and own the strategic vision and roadmap for the company’s proposition portfolio, ensuring each offering has a clear rationale, competitive positioning, and path to growth
• Lead proposition lifecycle management — from identifying opportunities through to sunset decisions — grounded in market evidence and commercial performance
• Set the strategic direction for the full product portfolio, identifying where the business should invest, expand, or pivot based on market dynamics, competitive intelligence, and commercial outcomes
• Develop and evolve the strategic frameworks, methodologies, and analytical standards the team uses to evaluate opportunities, assess risks, and make recommendations
• Shape the strategic direction for AI-powered propositions within the portfolio, ensuring the team can evaluate where AI creates genuine market opportunity, how it strengthens existing offerings, and where the roadmap should evolve to maintain competitive advantage
• Own the voice-of-market function, synthesizing insights from advisory boards, win/loss analysis, client feedback, and competitive research into actionable strategic direction
• Anticipate market shifts and emerging trends at an industry level — including how AI is reshaping coaching, professional development, and adjacent markets — ensuring the organization is positioned to respond proactively rather than reactively
• Lead competitive intelligence at a portfolio level, maintaining a comprehensive view of the competitive landscape and translating findings into proposition and pricing implications
• Ensure market evidence is embedded in every strategic recommendation the team delivers
• Develop initial pricing recommendations for new and evolving propositions, grounded in market analysis, competitive intelligence, and product strategy — providing the Commercial team with a clear strategic foundation for final pricing decisions
• Partner with Commercial on pricing and commercial frameworks that guide how propositions are packaged, positioned, and priced — while ensuring pricing ownership and execution remains with the Commercial function
• Flag to leadership when market evidence suggests current pricing may be misaligned with competitive positioning or product strategy, ensuring strategic perspective is heard in commercial decisions
• Lead the development of business cases for new propositions, market expansions, and major product investments, ensuring commercial viability is validated before significant resource commitment
• Monitor portfolio performance holistically, identifying cross-portfolio trends, cannibalization risks, and strategic gaps that require action
• Own the pilot and soft launch process for new propositions, managing MVP validation with strategic clients to test market fit before broader rollout
• Design evaluation frameworks for pilots, defining success criteria and ensuring early performance data informs go/no-go decisions
• Collaborate with Product Management and Solutions to coordinate pilot delivery, while retaining strategic ownership of what is being tested and why
• Hand off to Product Marketing post soft-launch for broader go-to-market execution
• Own the strategy and growth of the Experience Centre — a secure, authenticated environment for clients and sellers to explore products and access product information not available on the public website
• Define the strategic direction for the Experience Centre, including what product information and features are showcased, ensuring it evolves in line with proposition updates and competitive positioning
• Ensure Product Strategists identify which product features from their portfolios should be represented in the center, while Product Marketing handles the execution of updates and promotion of the site
• Be accountable for the growth and adoption of the Experience Centre, ensuring it is leveraged in high-value prospects and client engagements as a strategic differentiation asset
• Define the key metrics that matter for each proposition — including usage, client retention, growth, feature adoption, and pipeline performance — and partner with Rev Ops and Technology teams to build and maintain the dashboards that track them
• Ensure every member of the team knows their numbers cold — each Product Strategist should be able to speak fluently to the growth, challenges, and performance trends of their products at any time
• Hold the team accountable for the growth of their products, including setting targets with sales leadership when running product campaigns and tracking pipeline performance against those targets
• Use portfolio performance data to drive strategic decisions — surfacing underperformance, validating investment hypotheses, and providing evidence-based recommendations for portfolio shifts
• Represent Product Strategy at the executive level, partnering with the CTO, Product Management leadership, and Commercial leadership to influence company-wide product and commercial decisions
• Drive cross-functional alignment on what to build and why, serving as the strategic bridge between market insight and product development priorities
• Serve as the escalation point for high-stakes strategic decisions, providing clarity and direction when competing priorities or ambiguous market signals require senior judgment
• Build strong relationships across the organization, ensuring Product Strategy is embedded as a critical voice in product planning, pricing discussions, and proposition development
• Hold clear scope boundaries without alienating Product Marketing, Sales, or Solutions — influencing through partnership rather than ownership of downstream activities
• Build, lead, and develop the Product Strategy team, setting clear expectations, goals, and development plans for each team member
• Foster a culture of strategic rigor, ownership, evidence-based thinking, and continuous improvement
• Design the team’s operating model, including how work is allocated across propositions, how the team partners with Product Management, and how strategic output is delivered and measured
• Champion the team’s value and impact across the organization, ensuring Product Strategy is recognized as an indispensable function

Benefits

• Your Own World-class coach to help you grow personally and professionally.
• Coaching for Friends and family because coaching is a gift worth passing on.
• Charity Days to support the causes close to your heart - because doing good feels good.
• Learning Budget to fuel your curiosity. If it helps you grow, we’re in.
• Weekly Wellbeing Hour just for you. No meetings. No emails. Just space to breathe, reflect, or reset.
• Regional benefits including 23 vacation days + 3 floating holidays, 401k, comprehensive health insurance
• A welcoming place to do your best work. Comfortable, collaborative and inclusive.
• medical, dental, vision, term life and AD&D insurance, short-term and long-term disability, additional voluntary benefits, commuter benefits, wellness plans, and a 401k plan or a non-qualified deferred compensation plan.
• Available paid leave includes Personal Time Off (PTO) on an accrual basis per calendar year, Paid Holidays, and up to 6 weeks of Paid Parental Leave.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees