Product Manager

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive. 

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.

As a Product Manager you will be responsible for driving customer and business value through

ownership of new and existing products. You will manage products end-to-end, from early-stage

research and ideation, through to implementation and improvement over time. Your impact will be

measured by key commercial and customer success metrics. You will be comfortable working

autonomously where appropriate, with the support of your product leadership team.

• Actively network across Xero to understand how products fit into Xero's strategy, objectives
• and future
• Work directly with the customer to conduct research, collect insights or validate understanding, getting support from the broader product function as required.
• Use customer data and insights particularly in assessing value and viability risks, to inform product roadmap and planning
• Define the scope of the customer problem and frame possible solutions to test, validate and refine with the support from relevant team members
• Build strong relationships with the broader product function’s teams, collaborating effectively with your internal stakeholders
• Participate in developing a strategy for the product line, including securing funding, resourcing
• Taking an active role in the annual and quarterly OKR process, with support from product leadership
• Take responsibility for managing risks (in line with Xero Risk Management Standard) arising from non-functional concerns including security, privacy, regulatory change and compliance, accuracy, responsible data use and availability: consulting with stakeholders and leading trade-off decisions
• Develop product roadmaps to execute on the product strategy, and can manage a product to its roadmap
• Take responsibility for establishing team delivery cadence and rituals, and facilitating these as required
• Develop an effective release strategy, with the support from relevant team members
• Work collaboratively with the product function to ensure an effective launch
• Monitor the overall commercial & customer results of the product line, working with other product team members to support as required
• Monitor and analyse the ongoing performance of a product
• Determine where improvements to the existing product can be made or scheduled
• Provide support between stages of product development to ensure continuity and cohesiveness, and alignment of product to strategy and roadmap
• Manage a product across the end-to-end lifecycle (e.g. launch through to sunset) to ensure maintenance and support throughout the life of the product
• Work as a tie-breaking decision-maker, ensuring where the product team cannot get to consensus, the product manager will weigh up all inputs and make the decision
• Support recruitment of new Xero's as required, ensuring team members are high quality, fit Xero's culture, and are on-boarded effectively

• Critical capabilities

• Love customer problems:
• Plans, runs, documents and synthesises user research initiatives using standard frameworks to deliver impactful insights for Xero
• Uses multiple techniques to interrogate customer evidence to accurately identify and define problems customers care about
• Develops and justifies well thought through MVP/MLP solutions to solve customer problems
• Designs and executes experiments to validate solution options with quantitative and qualitative evidence

• Look to the future:
• Clearly articulates the product’s value, functionality, and competitive industry trends, to act as a trusted source of information for the product/domain
• Develops a product strategy and roadmap in line with Xero’s strategy to guide product decision-making and long-term goals
• Generates new ideas to drive more innovative and creative products

• Work the Xero way:
• Effectively groups and prioritises stories, bugs and chores, managing both team capacity and release timeframes
• Effectively applies and advocates for Xero’s PM ways of working to improve team operations
• Effectively manages releases, including developing accompanying assets, to deliver incremental value to the customer

• Demonstrate commercial acumen:
• Accurately sizes market / segments by number of customers and financial value, relative to acquisition and pricing assumptions
• Defines a product’s success criteria to align stakeholders to a shared idea of product success
• Makes evidence-based decisions based on analysis of commercial, customer and product requirements to guide team progress

• Do it together:
• Facilitates meetings with predefined structures or scripts (e.g., stand ups, IPM’s, and retro’s) leading to clear actions for a team to progress with
• Communicates effectively as a product evangelist across the entire product lifecycle foster alignment and buy-in to the product vision
• Actively collaborates with other functions to drive successful collaboration on products and outcomes

• Explore the data:
• Conducts objective, rigorous and accurate analysis, making logical and defensible inferences where data is incomplete
• Communicates complex data and insights with impact across both junior and senior stakeholders
• Integrates data from multiple systems, sources, and people to deliver new insights to the team

Why Xero?

At Xero, we are empowered to bring our ‘whole self’ to work. Our collaborative and inclusive culture is one we’re immensely proud of. We know that a diverse workforce is a strength that enables businesses, including ours, to better understand and serve customers, attract top talent and innovate. We care about learning together and celebrate our teams’ continuous improvement and career development. 

Want to read more about inclusivity at Xero? Learn a little more about it here.

We offer a great remuneration package, including compelling benefits and perks, like Xero shares and great parental leave policies. We also support flexible working arrangements that allow you to balance your work, your life and your passions. Our Canadian Xero family includes Hubdoc and TaxCycle and we have offices in Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver. From the moment you step through our doors, you’ll feel welcome and supported to do the best work of your life.

At Xero we embrace diversity and inclusion and value a #challenge mindset. Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single competency or experience . If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be just the right person for this role and Xero. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at time of application and throughout the interview process.