Head of operation jobs in Home based

Product Lead – HOSTHub  

(Operational Product Delivery) 

Reports to: Operations Director (Head of Delivery) 
Contract: 1.0 FTE (Temp to Perm) 
Location: Remote (UK or International) 

Role Purpose 

The Product Lead – HOSTHub is responsible for identifying, prioritising, and resolving day-to-day product challenges across HOST’s digital platform. 

HOSTHub serves as the operational backbone of the organisation, enabling delivery across finance, legal, partnerships, and hosted partner services. In this role, the Product Lead ensures the platform functions effectively in practice—by understanding user needs, surfacing issues early, and driving the design, prioritisation, and rapid delivery of solutions. 

While contributing to the longer-term product vision in collaboration with the leadership team and development partners, the primary focus remains on operational product delivery. This includes managing fortnightly sprint cycles, maintaining a dynamic and prioritised backlog, and ensuring continuous alignment between user requirements, internal processes, and platform capabilities. 

The role requires a highly hands-on individual who thrives at the intersection of users, internal teams, and developers, with the ability to translate real-world challenges into clear, actionable product decisions. 

Core Responsibilities 

1. Product Problem Identification and Prioritisation 

Lead the ongoing identification of friction points, inefficiencies, and system gaps across HOSTHub use cases, including those impacting hosted partners, funders, and internal staff workflows. 

Maintain a dynamic, prioritised backlog of product issues and enhancements, informed by user insight and operational impact. 

Work closely with delivery teams across finance, legal, partnerships, and community support to understand how the platform performs in practice and where it falls short of user needs. 

Translate operational challenges into clear, well-defined product requirements that are actionable for development teams. 

Ensure prioritisation is driven by delivery urgency, risk exposure, and opportunities for efficiency, rather than abstract feature development. 

2. Sprint Management and Delivery Execution 

Own the end-to-end delivery of the product, managing fortnightly sprint cycles. 

Set sprint priorities, create and refine tickets, and ensure all development work is well-scoped, logically sequenced, and ready for delivery. 

Collaborate directly with development contractors to run sprint planning, stand-ups (where applicable), and sprint reviews. 

Validate completed work against real user workflows before release to ensure quality and usability. 

Maintain clear visibility of progress, risks, and dependencies, escalating blockers and trade-offs to the Operations Director as needed. 

Provide bi-weekly sprint reports outlining delivered outcomes, outstanding issues, and upcoming priorities. 

3. User Engagement and Feedback Loops 

Establish continuous feedback loops with both internal users (staff teams) and external stakeholders (hosted partners and funders). 

Conduct structured user conversations to understand how systems are used in practice, not just how they were designed to be used. 

Validate proposed solutions with users prior to development where appropriate, ensuring alignment with real needs. 

Ensure user insights consistently inform backlog prioritisation and shape sprint scope. 

Maintain a clear view of user satisfaction grounded in qualitative feedback, not just survey-based metrics. 

4. Cross-Team Operational Alignment 

Act as the central point of coordination across product, delivery teams, and external developers. 

Ensure HOSTHub effectively supports real operational workflows across key service areas, including Project Hosting, Hosted Grantmaking, and Capacity Building. 

Partner closely with Finance, Legal, and Partnerships teams to align system functionality with compliance, contractual, and reporting requirements. 

Identify and resolve misalignments between team processes and platform functionality, either by adapting the system or clarifying and standardising ways of working. 

5. Development Oversight  

Manage the day-to-day relationship with the development team, ensuring requirements are clear and issues are addressed promptly. 

Ensure all development outputs are practical, functional, and aligned with real operational needs. 

Avoid over-specification and unnecessary complexity, prioritising simple, implementable solutions. 

Track defects, rework, and technical debt, incorporating them into sprint priorities where they have a meaningful operational impact. 

6. Data, Workflow, and System Effectiveness 

Ensure HOSTHub captures and delivers data that is accurate, actionable, and aligned with reporting requirements. 

Identify and implement opportunities to automate key workflows, reducing manual effort across teams. 

Partner with internal stakeholders to ensure system logic supports compliance and audit requirements in day-to-day operations. 

Maintain clear, practical documentation of key workflows and system behaviours to support effective operational use. 

7. Risk, Compliance, and System Integrity 

Work closely with the Legal Lead and Operations Director to ensure product decisions do not introduce unmanaged risk. 

Prioritise data protection, security, and system reliability as core product considerations. 

Ensure compliance requirements, including data protection and financial controls, are embedded in how the platform operates in practice. 

Take clear ownership of system incidents or failures, coordinating response and ensuring timely resolution and follow-through. 

8. Contribution to Product Direction 

Contribute to longer-term product thinking, including roadmap development and the ongoing evolution of the system. 

Provide grounded input to strategy based on observed user behaviour, operational constraints, and delivery realities. 

Ensure product direction remains focused on solutions that are practical, scalable, and genuinely valuable to users. 

Key Relationships 

Internal: Operations Director, Finance Team, Legal Lead, Partnerships Director, Community Support Team, Data Analyst, Training Lead. 

External: Developers, technical providers, hosted partners, funders. 

Performance Indicators 

Reliable delivery against sprint commitments, with a clear connection to resolved operational issues. 

Reduction in recurring user-reported problems across key workflows. 

Demonstrable improvements in system usability and efficiency for internal teams and hosted partners. 

A well-maintained backlog with clear, transparent prioritisation rationale. 

Strong alignment between platform functionality and operational delivery needs. 

Timely identification and effective resolution of system risks and critical defects. 

Required Experience 

5–8 years’ experience in hands-on product management or product delivery roles, with clear ownership of day-to-day execution. 

Proven experience managing sprint cycles and working directly with developers to deliver iterative improvements. 

Strong track record of identifying user needs and translating them into effective product solutions. 

Experience working with complex operational systems involving multiple user groups and workflows. 

Ability to operate effectively in environments with evolving and loosely defined requirements. 

Comfortable working across technical and non-technical teams, acting as a practical bridge between them. 

Familiarity with system integrations, workflow tools, and data-driven platforms (e.g. CRM systems, finance platforms automation tools) 

Strong prioritisation skills, with the ability to balance urgency, impact, and feasibility. 

Clear, structured communication style, enabling effective coordination and delivery clarity across teams.