Product Director

The organisation

Bol.com is leading the retail revolution in The Netherlands. The e-commerce platform makes daily life simpler for 12 million customers. Together with 42,000 partners who do business on the retail tech platform, bol.com offers over 28.5 million SKUs. In 2020, bol.com saw a 70 per cent year-on-year growth, resulting in an all-time high revenue of 4.3 billion euros. And those numbers will continue to rise significantly.

Bol.com is so far ahead of the industry that they are pioneering every step of the way. To stay ahead of the curve, their tech strategy focuses on three areas:

• Enabling partners to get their assortment online easily;
• Making partner-facing products function flawlessly at scale. Examples are the API, the retailer portal and all assortment interfaces;
• Monitoring platform-wide quality.

Bol.com is hiring a new Product Director for the Platform organization to take charge of these three focus areas.

“This is an opportunity to develop, advocate and implement an innovative vision and strategy for our platform tooling and technical solutions, mostly from scratch.” – Margaret Versteden, Chief Platform Officer

The position

This is a high-impact role at bol.com, the number one online retailer in the Netherlands and Belgium. This is one of the key Director positions at bol.com focusing on innovation. With a team of 85 direct reports and 15 dedicated scrum teams (numbers that are increasing in the near future), the Product Director has both strategic and managerial responsibility for the main growth driver of the business: the marketplace platform and tooling.

Tasks & responsibilities

Technology at bol.com is divided into multiple domains, the biggest are: Platform, Logistics and Marketing. These domains have a dedicated Product Director (Head of Product). This is a vacancy for a Product Director for the Platform Technologies department, responsible for the engine that enables third-party sellers to sell their products via bol.com. This business model is responsible for 50 per cent of revenue and 80 per cent of the growth of the entire organization.

This is a co-leadership role responsible for the Platform Technologies department (200 FTE). Together with Tech Director Feike Groen, the Product Director will define and push the technical boundaries of this leading platform. They will share the responsibility for the continuous improvement and innovation of the Product Organization and its way of working while cultivating collaboration between innovation-reliant teams. It is a highly impactful role, making bol.com the one-stop shop for all its customers’ needs, while simultaneously safeguarding highly competitive partner propositions.

“Because platform success is mission-critical, we have to stay ahead of the curve.” – Feike Groen, Tech Director

The Product Director will be the visionary strategist who inspires, coaches, develops and empowers seven product teams (85 FTE in total), consisting of Product Managers, Product Owners, Analysts and Designers. The direct reports of the Product Director will be seven Product Managers, the Community Manager and the Domain Innovation Lead. To keep up with platform demands, the team will most likely need to double in size over the next few years.

The Product Director will also be a driving force within the Innovation Leadership Council. Reporting directly to the Chief Platform Officer, Margaret Versteden, the Product Director will align product development with the needs and ambitions of customers, partners and internal stakeholders. The Product Director will develop and implement the innovation strategy and roadmap towards future-proof, infinitely scalable platform technologies and tooling. This involves designing and owning a 70/20/10 (future/tomorrow/today) pipeline of strategic initiatives allowing for swift and continuous adaptation.

Candidate profile

Requirements*:

• Minimum of 15 years of experience
• At least 7 years in a product leadership role (experience as Head of Product or CPO is a plus)
• Developing the platform innovation vision, strategy and roadmap
• Managing multiple teams
• Managing a wide range of stakeholders
• Guiding and growing teams through transitional phases

* Research shows that while men feel confident enough to apply when they meet about 60% of the requirements, women only apply when they tick every box. So if this role has your name on it, but you’re not sure about the criteria, we still want to hear from you.

Interested?

You can apply to this position by using the link below. Bol.com is working with Top of Minds to fill this job position.