Product Director, Public Sector Lisbon, Portugal

Unit4; Lisboa; Hybrid; EUR 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Unit4 is seeking a Product Director for Public Sector to own the product vision, strategy, and multi-horizon roadmap for governments, municipalities, and agencies. You will work with engineering to build a vertically focused platform across finance, HR, procurement, and operations.

You will lead adoption-focused outcomes, collaborate with sales and marketing, and ensure regulatory, security, and localization requirements are reflected in the roadmap.

Qualifications

• Proven track record building enterprise software for the public sector (municipalities, local authorities, agencies, or emergency services).
• Deep knowledge of public finance management, accounting, and government budgeting practices.
• Solid understanding of public procurement frameworks and ERP requirements.
• Awareness of security, data residency, and audit expectations for government buyers.

Responsibilities

• Own the Public Sector product vision, strategy, and multi-horizon roadmap aligned with platform strategy and growth targets.
• Lead a prioritized product backlog with engineering capacity, defining outcomes, metrics, release plans, and quality criteria.
• Own feature outcomes, define adoption and customer impact goals, and track post-launch performance.
• Serve as the internal authority for the Public Sector vertical, enabling sales, marketing, and pre-sales with industry grounding.
• Translate sector knowledge into investment-backed product requirements and build-vs-partner decisions.

Skills

Enterprise software

Public sector

ERP / ERP systems

SaaS platforms

Public finance management

Job description

The Role

Unit4 supports hundreds of public sector organizations across the UK, Netherlands, the Nordics, and similarly managed geographies - municipalities, local authorities, agencies, non-department public bodies, and emergency services. These organizations operate under a persistent double constraint: budgets that do not grow and teams that are stretched thin, often without the dedicated technology capacity that private-sector counterparts take for granted. The gap between what they are expected to deliver for communities and what their current systems enable them to do keeps widening. As Product Director for Public Sector, you own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap that helps close that gap.

This is not a policy advisory role. You will have dedicated engineering capacity to build vertical depth that makes Unit4 genuinely competitive for local government and specialist agencies. You will work closely with horizontal product teams to ensure the platform delivers end-to-end across finance, HR, procurement, and operations, but the vertical product strategy and roadmap are yours.

The right person has built enterprise software for public sector organizations - municipalities, local authorities, agencies, or emergency services. You understand what public finance management looks like from the inside, what compliance and audit obligations demand in practice, and you have shipped features that public sector finance and operations teams actually use.

AI presents a genuine opportunity for public sector organizations: automating administrative burden, accelerating compliance processes, and providing better insight for decision-making. But these are not commercial organizations free to move fast and iterate. They are stewards of public funds, citizen data, and community trust, operating under transparency and security obligations that set a higher bar. This role exists to ensure Unit4's public sector roadmap is complete, balanced, and innovative without being reckless: a portfolio that earns the confidence of government buyers and gives public servants more time to focus on what they are there to do - building stronger communities.

What You'll Do

• Own the Public Sector product vision, strategy, and multi-horizon roadmap; align it with Unit4's platform strategy and commercial growth targets.


• Lead a prioritized product backlog with dedicated engineering capacity - defining outcomes, success metrics, release plans, and quality criteria.


• Own feature outcomes, not just delivery — define clear adoption, usage, and customer impact goals for every capability you champion, and track performance against them after launch.


• Serve as the internal authority on the Public Sector vertical, providing product, marketing, analyst relations, and pre-sales teams with the industry grounding they need to position, demonstrate, and sell effectively.


• Translate deep sector knowledge into specific, investment-backed product requirements: problem statements, opportunity sizing, and build-vs-partner decisions.


• Define industry-specific solution blueprints, reference configurations, and pre-built templates that reduce implementation time for public sector customers.


• Work closely with horizontal product teams to ensure public sector requirements are reflected in platform investment across finance, HR, procurement, and operations.


• Partner with the Industry Growth Director on launch readiness, pricing, packaging, and field enablement.


• Engage directly with strategic customers and the Public Sector Industry Board to validate roadmap direction, co-innovate, and capture outcome evidence.


• Ensure regulatory, security, accessibility, and localisation requirements across our supported geographies are systematically reflected in the roadmap.


• Monitor the competitive landscape - know what Civica, Visma, Centric, CGI, and others are shipping and what it means for Unit4's positioning.


• Work with partners to extend the value proposition for public sector customers.

What You'll Bring

• Proven product management experience building enterprise software - ERP or enterprise SaaS - for public sector organizations, particularly municipalities, local authorities, or specialist agencies. You have shipped products used by public sector finance and operations teams, not just consulted for them.


• Deep knowledge of public finance management, public sector accounting, and government budgeting practices.


• Solid understanding of public procurement frameworks and how they translate into practical ERP requirements - from approval workflows and audit trails to supplier management and contract compliance.


• Understanding of the security, data residency, and audit expectations of government buyers and what that means for cloud ERP product decisions.


• A clear point of view on how AI can responsibly empower public sector organizations - balancing real opportunity for efficiency and insight with the accountability, transparency, and security obligations these organizations carry.


• Commercial orientation: you understand how product decisions drive ARR, win rate, and customer retention.


• Strong communication skills at Head of Finance, Head of ICT, and senior public service leadership level.