Product Director

Product Director – Platform & AI

Location: Wilmslow ( min. 3 days office) (UK, global remit) Reports to: Group Chief Product Officer

Overview

Citation Group helps over 120,000 SMEs across the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada take care of the non-negotiables of running a business — HR and employment law, health & safety, ISO certification, background screening, cybersecurity, e-learning and more. Our mission is simple: build better businesses to create a better world.

Today our customers buy brilliant single-point solutions across our portfolio. Our ambition is bigger: to connect those solutions into a single, intelligent platform experience. Atlas is the customer portal that brings our products together, and Unity is the single login gateway behind it — one identity, one access point, every Citation product. Around 40% of our clients sit behind Unity today; getting the rest there, and deepening the integration between our solutions, is one of the defining product challenges of the next few years.

The next leap is Atlas.AI — a connected intelligence layer that will redefine what our products do for customers. Rather than asking an SME to navigate separate tools for HR, safety, certification and the rest, Atlas.AI understands their whole business and works across all of it — anticipating risk, surfacing what matters, and acting on their behalf. It turns a portfolio of standalone solutions into a single intelligent partner that gets smarter the more it’s used. This is the product that will define Citation’s next decade and set the standard for the next generation of compliance and business-services software. It’s a greenfield build, and this is the person who gets to design, build and deliver it from the ground up.

This role owns that agenda end to end: Atlas (Unity, Ecommerce, Atlas.AI), the shared Design function, and Product Operations — the analytics, insight and operating model for how Product works in an AI-native world. It is the platform layer that underpins everything Citation Group does in product. If Atlas works, every solution works better. If Product Operations works, every team builds better. This is one of the most consequential roles in the product organisation.

Why this role? Why now?

• Build a product that defines the next generation. Atlas.AI is our most ambitious bet — a connected intelligence layer that will set the standard for what compliance and business-services software can do. With the strategic direction taking shape, you’ll design, build and deliver it, transforming how 120,000 SMEs experience our products and putting Citation at the forefront of the field.
• Unify the platform. With only 40% of clients behind Unity today, you own a clear, high-value mandate: integrate our solutions through a single gateway and bring the rest of our client base into one seamless experience.
• Reshape how Product works. AI is about to transform ways of working and organisational structures across the industry. You’ll shape what that means for Citation Product — and bring the whole team with you.
• A senior seat across the Group. As a senior member of the product leadership team reporting to the Group CPO, you’ll work across every business unit and closely with the product leads for each solution. This is a role for someone who thrives on influence across a broad, multi-brand organisation.

What you’ll be doing

• Design, build and deliver Atlas.AI — the connected intelligence layer at the heart of Citation’s future. Take the strategic direction and turn it into a real, working product that understands an SME’s wholebusiness and works across all of it. This is the defining build of the role: the chance to create something genuinely ahead of the market and own its delivery from concept to live product.
• Own the Atlas platform — Unity and Ecommerce. Keep Unity best-in-class and lead the integration agenda that brings far more of our 120,000 clients behind a single gateway. Drive Ecommerce against its VCP targets.
• Lead the shared Design function. The Group’s UX/UI and research team reports into you. Build a consistent design system, research practice and quality bar that serves every product vertical and raises the standard of everything we ship.
• Lead Product Operations and shape the AI-native operating model. Run a strong product operations capability — product analytics, trend analysis and the insight that helps every team make better, evidence-based decisions. And as AI dramatically changes how product teams are structured and how they work, you’ll define that new way of working for Citation Product: embed AI tooling deeply into how we discover, design, build and ship, and actively upskill and engage the wider Product team to drive real adoption — not just experimentation.
• Work across the business. Partner closely with the product leads for each of our solutions to land the platform, the integrations and the new ways of working across a multi-brand, multi-geography organisation.

What we’re looking for

• A senior product leader from a B2B environment — ideally B2B SaaS serving SMEs or regulated industries — with a strong track record of building and scaling products that customers love.
• A thinker and a doer. You can set a compelling vision and strategy, then roll your sleeves up and deliver it. We need both — strategic ambition matched by a genuine bias for execution and getting things done.
• Hands-on with AI. You embrace AI tooling in how you and your teams work, and you have real experience building AI or generative AI products — not just talking about them.
• A platform mindset. Experience owning products or platforms that serve multiple teams or business units, ideally including identity/SSO, integration or ecommerce.
• A design and craft champion who has led or partnered closely with UX/UI and research functions to raise product quality.
• An operating-model shaper. You’ve driven meaningful change in how product teams work — agile practice, tooling, structure — and brought people with you.
• A strong cross-functional operator. Commercially astute, comfortable influencing senior peers and business leaders, and at home in a fast-paced, PE-backed, multi-brand environment.
• 10+ years in product management, with significant time at Director level managing multiple product lines or a platform, and managing through other managers.

What’s in it for you

• The chance to design and build Atlas.AI from the ground up — a genuinely game-changing product that will define Citation’s next decade and stand at the forefront of the next generation of business-services software.
• Ownership of the platform layer that underpins everything we do in product, plus the shared Design function and the AI-native operating model for the whole Product team.
• A senior seat on the product leadership team, working across every business unit and shaping Citation’s evolution into a modern, AI-native software business.
• A high-impact, highly visible role — your work will be seen and felt by senior leadership, the board and our investors.
• A supportive culture that prizes action, innovation and getting great things done — for our customers and each other.