Head of Product Operations

QAD•Miami, FL

16h•Remote

About The Position

QAD | Redzone is building the next generation of manufacturing software. As we expand from a traditional product portfolio into an increasingly AI-powered platform, we're standing up a Product Operations function for the first time, and we're looking for the leader to build it. The Head of Product Operations owns how product investment is prioritized across the portfolio, how new AI-powered products are introduced and qualified for release, and how the organization measures whether what we ship is actually working. You'll build the function from a small existing team plus two specialist hires, set the standards the rest of the product organization works to, and serve as a strategic partner to the Chief Product Officer. This is not a roadmap-administration role. It's a senior leadership seat with real decision-making authority over what ships, when, and at what level of capability.

Requirements

8+ years in product, product operations, or program leadership, including standing up central systems, NPI processes, or release-governance functions at scaling enterprise software companies.
Demonstrated ownership of a stage-gate or release-governance process for a complex multi-product portfolio.
Credibly fluent in LLM-based products: tool use, evaluation frameworks, telemetry, safety constraints, autonomy boundaries — enough to govern this kind of work credibly, not to build it.
The instinct to find the line between chaos and bureaucracy when setting up processes — comfort with structure, allergy to ceremony.
Backbone. You will routinely tell product and engineering leaders that a product cannot ship yet, and you will be right more often than wrong.

Nice To Haves

Manufacturing, ERP, or enterprise SaaS experience is a meaningful plus.

Responsibilities

Stand up Product Operations as a horizontal function serving the full product portfolio, integrating an existing team with two specialist hires you will make.
Own the New Product Introduction process end-to-end for every AI-powered product we ship: chair the stage-gate reviews (concept → pilot → general availability), and the re-entry reviews that qualify a product for expanded capability levels.
Hold single-decision-maker authority on whether a product is ready to ship, including against commercial pressure.
Own the capability-tier framework that defines how AI-powered products earn increasing levels of operational responsibility over time — from informational support to assisted decision-making to supervised execution — and the criteria for moving between tiers.
Own portfolio prioritization across the product organization, with a defensible framework for impact and readiness, and maintain a single source of truth for what the org is working on.
Own product trust and safety governance: containment of impact when things go wrong, rollback readiness, and the auditability of how AI-powered products reach their recommendations.
Enforce ownership discipline for every shipped AI product: every product has a named accountable owner, a named quality owner, a named exception handler, and a named customer success partner before it goes live.
Serve as a strategic thought partner to the CPO, and as the credible voice for the function in leadership and board conversations.
Hire and lead the two-three person team, and operate as the bench for both reports during the first 12 months as the function matures.