Head of Product, Merchandising

Note: While this role is for a permanent position, it is initially covering the Merchandising world described below as part of maternity cover. Cazoo Product is continuously growing, and ahead of the role-holder returning, we will work with the interim to transition into another permanent Head of Product role.

As the lead product role for the Merchandising Prod-Eng teams, you will be key to creating products that fulfil Cazoo's ambitious growth plans and exceeding our customers' expectations.

As Head of Product you will manage the Merchandising products portfolio and product teams. This is a critical group of products that covers the entire pre-sales customer experience - from landing on the website, browsing content, through to search and finding the perfect car. As Cazoo scales to achieve it's highly ambitious targets in an increasingly fierce competitor environment, it is absolutely critical that these experiences evolve to meet an ambitious roadmap focused on growing traffic, sales and profit, whilst delivering a first class, delightful and frictionless customer experience.

Working closely with key teams such as Brand, Performance Marketing, Customer Services, Data, CRM and Content, you are accountable for making decisions on the strategy, vision and execution for this product portfolio, and responsible for ensuring that your team has the resources and skills required to successfully deliver roadmaps. Leading a continuous and rapid A/B testing / MVT optimisation programme is an essential part of this role. There are currently 5 teams in this group with more planned.

Working closely with your engineering colleagues, you are ultimately responsible for making sure we're building the right things for customers of your products. Your partners in engineering are responsible for making sure we build these things in the right way, but both of you care deeply about both things - it's one team!

At Cazoo we believe in autonomous empowered Product-Engineering Teams. While there will be plenty of strong opinions across our business about what the right thing to build is, you and your teams are responsible for rapidly evaluating these ideas using experimentation and data to determine what is the right thing to build for our customers and business. Don't expect to be dictated to or told what to build!

Key responsibilities include:

• Accountability for the Merchandising product teams, working very closely with stakeholders of those teams to define product vision, strategy, roadmap and execution for them by building and leading a team of Product Managers.


• Clearly communicating the story, value and roadmap for your products in non-technical terms ? so that the whole business understands the value and why we're doing it.


• Rapidly gain an understanding of your customers and business stakeholders and their pain points.


• Responsible for achieving or exceeding agreed product outcomes and key results across all the team's Products.


• Agreeing clear objectives and results for team members aligned to key customer and business outcomes.


• Leading an ongoing and rapid optimisation programme using A/B and MVT to improve site performance.


• Owning the 'business results' including non-functional requirements, outreach and uptake within our business.


• Manage conflicting priorities, driving a high level of focus and excellence with a talented team.


• Identify and resolve impediments faced by the team; proactively raise risks or delays to commitments.


• Build and nurture a great team of Product Managers, and plan ahead for capability and capacity.


• Build and manage relationships with any 3rd parties related to your product suite.


• Lead discussions on the delivery of key programmes or initiatives, ensuring resources are aligned towards delivering those.


• Strong technical understanding ? we don't expect you to code, but you must understand how your products are technically architected and have an understanding of engineering and infrastructure best practices.


• You must be able to trade off near term results with long term issues such as tech debt and architecture considerations.


• Closely collaborate with engineering leaders to ensure the Product team capabilities are aligned with the technical strategy, keeping future roadmap into account and build team capabilities to match.

HoP Merchandising-specific Responsibilities

• Strong in ecommerce and customer-facing shopping and content experiences


• Understanding of customers' key concerns when buying vehicles: Help me find the right car, what can I afford, trust in the specific car (avoid buying a dud), trust the retailer, help me buy once I'm ready...


• ...and how to translate that into an experience that increases conversion and provides an exceptional customer experience


• ...answering every customers' question (so they only need to contact us if they really choose to)


• ...and sells our cars in their best light


• Thorough understanding of traffic-driving digital marketing technology: SEO, PPC, CRM, Affiliates, etc.


• Strength in discovering and delivering directly customer-facing products (websites, apps, etc.), and also more technical products like APIs for product feeds and 3rd party "MarTech" integrations.


• Experienced in running A/B and MVT programs to optimise site performance.

Product Management Practice

You will...

• Provide leadership to continuously improve product management practice at Cazoo


• Proactively keep up to date with latest developments in product management thinking, process and techniques


• Champion Build Measure Learn, creating a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within the product management discipline, especially in discovery and delivery methodologies


• Lead recruitment and interview process for Product Managers; ensure we are continually raising the bar for Product Management at Cazoo.


• Set the example of what great product management looks like.

We are looking for a Head of Product?

• with proven extensive expertise & experience in Product Management


• who demonstrates great coaching skills, having successfully developed top performing Product Managers


• who has excellent interviewing and hiring skills


• with proven experience in setting vision, strategy, and direction; ultimately in working out what the right things to build are (as opposed to being given these things or told what to build by someone else)


• with in-depth experience in leading great product teams and delivering products that create significant customer and business value


• dual track (discovery/delivery) agile experience; at Cazoo we're big fans of Marty Cagan


• with excellent stakeholder management and facilitation skills


• with a passion for product management and the experience to back up their views


• with in-depth experience in consumer facing UI-driven products such as websites and mobile apps


• who can demonstrate the ability to think both strategically and tactically


• who is results-oriented (a bias to action) and able to motivate others, with a demonstrated ability to create clarity and action from ambiguity


• who is highly knowledgeable in multiple disciplines including product management, software engineering, logistics, ecommerce and sourcing data from 3rd parties


• who loves collaboration and has experience in leading cross-functional groups to swift decisions


• who has excellent communication skills ? both written and verbal


• with strong problem-solving skills and a methodical, analytical approach


• with fast, strong prioritisation and decision-making skills


• who excels in using both quantitative and qualitative data