Product Owner - Innovation Team

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Product Owner – Innovation Team based in Canada.We are looking for a hands‑on Product Owner to lead a small, senior, distributed engineering team focused on turning promising ideas into successful new products.You will own the innovation pipeline, guiding concepts from initial discovery and validation through prototyping and the launch of customer‑ready MVPs.Working closely with the Chief Product Officer and other product teams, you will ensure that every initiative is driven by clear assumptions, measurable outcomes, and customer evidence.The role combines product strategy, technical leadership, people management, and practical software development.You will also champion AI‑assisted engineering practices to accelerate experimentation and improve delivery quality.This is an opportunity to shape new product directions in a fully remote, technology‑driven environment, with the autonomy to validate ideas, make go/no‑go decisions, and bring successful products to market.Accountabilities
You will lead the innovation process from idea generation to product validation, balancing customer discovery, technical execution, and team development. Your responsibilities will include:Managing the pipeline of product concepts by capturing, evaluating, sizing, and prioritizing ideas, documenting assumptions and keeping leadership informed.
Taking funded concepts from discovery to a working MVP within a defined timeframe, typically one quarter, with a named customer or design partner involved in testing.
Defining measurable success criteria for each initiative and tracking outcomes such as usage, conversion, willingness to pay, and support requirements.
Making evidence‑based go/no‑go recommendations, transferring validated products to established product teams with a documented roadmap and operational runbook, and recording lessons from unsuccessful experiments.
Providing weekly updates to the Chief Product Officer on progress, risks, ownership, and deadlines.
Selecting the most effective technical approach for each concept, evaluating whether to build, buy, reuse, or adopt open‑source solutions.
Building prototypes and demonstration environments when needed, while reviewing technical designs and code produced by the team.
Ensuring MVPs are sufficiently production‑ready for real customer environments, including packaging, safe deployment, rollback procedures, and observability.
Collaborating with architecture and product teams to ensure successful MVPs can be integrated without requiring extensive redevelopment.
Leading and developing a small, distributed engineering team through regular one‑to‑ones, goal setting, performance reviews, and career development.
Managing recruitment activities, including defining role requirements, conducting technical interviews, onboarding, and mentoring engineers.
Establishing effective remote working practices that support asynchronous collaboration, documented decisions, transparent communication, and regular product demonstrations.
Promoting AI‑augmented engineering practices by coaching the team on effective coding‑agent use, including prompt quality, context management, code review, iteration, and error recovery.
Using AI coding agents to accelerate prototyping, generate test datasets, and prepare customer‑facing materials.
Requirements
The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering expertise with proven product‑building experience, practical discovery skills, and the ability to lead a small technical team. The following qualifications are expected:At least 5 years of professional software engineering experience.
At least 2 years of experience leading a small team, as a team lead, technical lead with people‑management responsibilities, founder, or engineering manager.
Demonstrated success taking at least one product from concept to its first paying customers, as well as experience recognizing when to discontinue an initiative that is not delivering results.
Strong Linux proficiency at software engineering level, with the ability to build and review code in a modern programming language such as Python, Go, or TypeScript.
Experience debugging live systems directly in their operating environment.
Practical product discovery skills, including customer interviews, assumption mapping, pricing experiments, and independent analysis of usage and conversion data.
Ability to quickly understand complex technical domains and make informed architectural decisions.
Proven people leadership experience, including one‑to‑ones, performance discussions, recruitment, and engineer development.
Experience working with AI‑assisted or agentic software development workflows.
Professional proficiency in written and spoken English.
Availability to work European business hours.
The following experience would be considered an advantage:Familiarity with the web hosting ecosystem, including cPanel/WHM, Plesk, DirectAdmin, or infrastructure operations for hosting providers.
Background in security products such as runtime protection, web application firewalls, malware detection, vulnerability management, or patching.
Experience with freemium or product‑led growth models and self‑service billing.
Familiarity with Node.Js or Python runtimes and their package ecosystems.
Confidence presenting products and ideas to customers and at industry events.
Benefits
Fully remote working arrangement, with the flexibility to work from anywhere worldwide.
Flexible working hours, allowing you to organize your working day.
24 days of paid annual vacation.
10 additional national holidays.
Unlimited sick leave.
Financial support for private medical insurance.
Reimbursement for co‑working spaces and gym or sports activities.
Dedicated budget for professional education and development.
Opportunities to work on interesting and challenging projects.
Potential rewards for innovative ideas that lead to patentable developments.
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