Chief Product Officer

The Digital Recruitment Company; Greater London; On-site; GBP 175,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

DRC Search is partnering with a payments fintech to appoint a Chief Product Officer. You will own the product vision, roadmap, and work closely with engineering on platform capabilities, architecture, and delivery.

You will lead a high-impact team, translate technical trade-offs into business priorities, and collaborate with commercial, risk, and operations to deliver trusted payments products.

Qualifications

• Senior product leadership in payments, fintech, or related financial tech.
• Background in software engineering or hands-on technical design of software products.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, APIs, and data flows.
• Ability to balance customer and commercial outcomes with technical debt.

Responsibilities

• Set product strategy with clear priorities and measurable outcomes.
• Lead and develop the product function with close engineering collaboration.
• Partner with engineering on technical strategy, platform investment, scalability.
• Assess opportunities with an understanding of architecture, APIs, and integrations.
• Engage with customers to understand workflows and technical needs.
• Collaborate with risk, compliance, and operations to launch usable products.
• Use data and feedback to guide decisions and improve products.
• Represent product at exec level and align on investment priorities.

Skills

Senior product leadership

Software engineering background

APIs & integrations

Architecture knowledge

Cross-functional leadership

Payments/fintech domain

Job description

Salary: £175,000-£250,000 base, plus bonus, benefits and wider package

DRC Search is working with a payments fintech seeking a Chief Product Officer who combines commercial product leadership with a strong grounding in software engineering. This is an opportunity to shape the product strategy while working closely with engineering on the systems and technical decisions that make payments products reliable, scalable and valuable to customers.

We are particularly interested in leaders who have worked as software engineers or held substantial hands-on technical roles earlier in their careers. You will be comfortable going deep with engineering teams, then translating technical choices into clear priorities for customers and the wider business.

The opportunity

You will own the product vision and roadmap, connecting customer needs and commercial opportunities with what the technology can deliver. You will partner closely with engineering leadership on platform capabilities, architecture, integrations, technical debt and delivery trade-offs.

In payments, product decisions have real technical consequences. Transaction flows, uptime, security, reconciliation and integrations all shape the customer experience. You will bring the technical judgement to ask the right questions and the product leadership to decide where the business should invest.

What you'll do

• Set the product strategy and turn it into clear priorities, roadmaps and measurable outcomes.
• Lead and develop the product function, building a team that works closely and effectively with engineering.
• Partner with engineering leaders on technical strategy, platform investment, scalability and delivery.
• Assess product opportunities with a practical understanding of software architecture, APIs, integrations and the engineering effort involved.
• Work directly with customers and partners to understand their workflows, pain points and technical requirements.
• Collaborate with commercial, risk, compliance and operations teams to launch products that customers can adopt and use with confidence.
• Use product data, customer feedback and commercial performance to guide decisions and improve existing products.
• Represent product at executive level, explaining technical trade-offs and securing alignment on investment priorities.

What we're looking for

• Senior product leadership experience in payments, fintech or closely related financial technology.
• A background in software engineering, or substantial hands-on experience designing and delivering software products before moving into product leadership.
• Strong technical understanding of software architecture, APIs, integrations, data flows and the challenges of building dependable systems at scale.
• The ability to engage credibly with engineers on implementation choices, constraints and technical debt without losing sight of customer and commercial outcomes.
• A track record of taking complex products from strategy through development, launch, adoption and growth.
• Experience leading product managers and working across engineering, design, commercial and regulated functions.
• Sound judgement when balancing speed of delivery with reliability, security, long-term platform health.

If you are a passionate and experienced product leader ready to make a significant impact on a growing company, we encourage you to apply. We're excited to hear how your expertise can help us achieve our ambitious goals.