Chief Product Officer (Remote)

Job Description

In this role

Ideally based within commutable distance to London, or alternatively a key European tech hub (with the ability to practically visit London regularly), the CPO will be the ultimate owner of Ably’s product function. You will report to the company’s Co-Founder & CEO, and will sit as part of the executive team.  

As a heavily product-led organisation, the Chief Product Officer will be responsible for what matters most to the company: building a great product that delights and delivers for developers building realtime experiences. 

You will be a seasoned, well-rounded, customer-centric, strategic and high-impact technology leader who brings a proven track record of building best-in-class software products in international, high-growth B2B SaaS businesses (with a strong bias towards experience in developer tools, infrastructure, and other modern cloud service offerings), delivering against company objectives and aggressive KPIs, and also playing a key role in broader business-wide decision-making.

Ideally, you will have:

• Technical background – You will be a technologist bringing a wealth of hands-on experience building and delivering platform solutions. You will have a solid grasp of designing and delivering API services, software development kits, developer tooling, developer documentation, and cloud solutions.  You will also have a good understanding of architectural concepts and patterns relevant to Ably’s customers, such as distributed systems, event-driven architectures, service-oriented architectures, local-first development, and edge services. 

• Proven product management depth & track record – You will be able to clearly demonstrate and evidence a proven track record of building, leading, professionalising and scaling a high-performing product team and capability; this will include having scaled a team and set of processes to deliver market leading products that delight customers and add demonstrable, consistent value to the business. You will be well-versed in both scaling existing products, and investing in new product development in order to diversify offerings and appeal to top-tier clients.

• Developer-facing ecosystem experience and B2B SaaS understanding – You will ideally have operated in the developer-facing ecosystem, and must bring a deep understanding of championing complex B2B SaaS technology in product-led businesses. You will also appreciate what it means to compose a sound and dependable product strategy to help drive exceptional growth in the coming years. 

• People leadership and stakeholder manager – You will be an inspiring, engaging people leader, able to set a vision and bring people with them, empowering teams across the organisation. You'll have a track record of building and leading strong, multi-cultural and internationally dispersed teams, bringing a systematic approach to hiring, leading, developing, and retaining high-performing talent, and creating a high impact, best-in-class product culture. 

• Customer-centricity – You will be obsessive about Ably’s customers, always putting their requirements at the heart of the discussion around their products and being able to align customer and business needs. You will have a profound understanding of customer pain points, profiles, and how to engage them at all stages in their journey and be deeply credible externally, acting as a key connector across a range of clients. 

• Commercially-minded, highly analytical & KPI-/Data-driven approach – You will be commercially minded and data-driven with an analytical mindset and will be able to justify key decisions with the correct data and structured thinking. You will set the right KPIs for your team and embed them successfully. You will be able to successfully collaborate with sales, marketing and technology to ensure maximum value is created through the ongoing product strategy and prioritisation decisions. 

• Growth company mindset & experience – You will bring valuable scale-up experience relevant to Ably’s current stage and its ambition. You will have worked in a high-growth, (ideally Founder-led) B2B SaaS success story, and be both familiar and comfortable with navigating the challenges and opportunities that a high growth environment presents.

• Culture, mission & values alignment – You will be passionate, tenacious and ambitious, as well as high-integrity, high energy, rigorous, low-ego, collaborative and personable. Will possess as much EQ as IQ. Will be excited by – and passionate about – Ably’s mission, values and journey.

What’s it like to work at Ably?

You’ll be part of a successful, highly motivated, and extremely collaborative team. We want to work in a company of inclusive people who treat each other well. To really thrive at Ably, you’ll need to believe in and be prepared to do your work in line with our values, which are:

• Open for all. Open is a mindset. When open, we’re better collaborators, communicators and creators. Whether open source, standards, or protocols, open hearts, minds, and eyes. It’s better when it’s open.

• Bias for action. We avoid analysis paralysis at all costs. We lean into doing in order to move us forward. When we have enough of what we need to act, we act.

• Even the best do better. We want to be the best - but that doesn’t mean we rest when we are. Improvement and growth - true betterment - is an ongoing journey. One fuelled by curiosity and taking risks.

• Technology needs humanity. Our technology means little without people - whether that’s how we treat our colleagues, or how we design developer experiences. Being human matters.

• Dependable people make dependable things. Dependability is integral to our mission and technology, but being dependable starts with our people. When we care enough to take real ownership of our products and problems - all else will follow.

• Bold creativity leads to the greatest rewards. When viewed through a different lens, what stands in the way can become the way. The bigger the challenge the easier the choice: bold creativity will always move us forward, create better outcomes, and set us apart.

What’s in it for you?

• A great company culture

• Share options

• The chance to learn and grow with a fast-moving company, supported by a learning budget that gives you access to professional training, events, conferences, workshops etc.

• Remote first: Unless you want to pop into our communal office space in Shoreditch, London, you’ll work from home most of the time, apart from when we have planning sessions and Summits. Travel to the office is at the employee's expense, apart from when we have Ably Summits

• Your choice of high quality tech kit to work on

• Home workstation set up budget of £500, plus an annual top-up of £150

• Regular company away days and social events

• Friday need-to-know drinks and snacks

• Private health insurance, including Doctor@Hand

• Access to private and confidential coaching via Sanctus

• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme with AXA

• A monthly wellbeing budget with Juno

• Enhanced parental leave

• 25 days of paid annual leave (33 days including bank holidays)

• 10 days of paid sick leave (including mental health days) per year

• Dog friendly office for when you’re in the office!

If you enjoy working as part of a technology company, value open source, and love solving hard problems - then we’d love to hear from you, regardless of whether you fit the job description exactly or not. If in doubt, drop us an email; we’d be more than happy to give you some advice on your application.

We believe our differences as individuals is what makes us great. Our people are at the heart of what we do, and we encourage everyone to be their most authentic self at Ably: we see inclusivity and openness as fundamental to creating long-term success as an organization. We encourage applications from all backgrounds regardless of age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, parental status, race, religion, educational background or neurodiversity. Ably has an amazing opportunity ahead of us, and we want anyone to be able to contribute to that opportunity.