Product Lead Practitioner

About the role

This is a role for a Product Lead who wants to apply deep expertise at the intersection of product strategy, AI, product commercial success, and private equity ownership across EMEA.  As a Product Management Lead Consultant, you will bring your product expertise to bear on the most consequential questions facing EMEA investors today: Is this product defensible in local and regional markets? Is the AI strategy credible? Can this team execute across countries, cultures, and regulatory contexts? Where is the real growth opportunity?

You will work directly with investment teams, operating partners, and portfolio company leadership to help them understand product-led investment risks and what it will take to realise the upside in EMEA. Engagements move quickly, the companies are diverse, and the work demands both analytical precision and strategic judgment.

Role responsibilities

• Lead and contribute to product assessments for investment firms and portfolio companies across the EMEA investment lifecycle, from pre-close diligence through post-close value creation and exit preparation
• Evaluate the strength, credibility, and competitive defensibility of a target company's product strategy, roadmap, and go-to-market approach across EMEA markets
• Assess how AI and machine learning are embedded in a company's product distinguishing genuine capability from surface-level positioning, and articulate the implications for competitive advantage, risk, and value creation
• Analyse product-market fit, customer segmentation, expansion opportunity, localisation needs, and the assumptions underlying growth projections across EMEA
• Review product team structure, delivery capability, execution track record, and organisational readiness for growth across distributed EMEA teams
• Conduct primary research including executive interviews, customer discovery conversations, and expert network engagements across relevant EMEA markets
• Synthesise findings from documentation, regional market research, customer evidence, and interviews into structured, investment-grade deliverables
• Communicate complex product and market dynamics clearly and concisely to deal teams, investment committees, operating partners, and company leadership across EMEA
• Advise portfolio company product leaders on strategy, prioritisation, localisation, and capability development post-close

What we’re looking for

Required

• 15+ years of product management experience, with significant time in senior or executive leadership roles (Director, VP, CPO, or equivalent) at B2B software or SaaS companies operating in EMEA or globally
• Demonstrated track record shipping products at scale, including ownership of product strategy, roadmap prioritisation, and cross-functional delivery in agile environments across regional or international markets
• Hands-on experience building or leading AI/ML-powered products — not just roadmap familiarity, but direct involvement in defining AI product strategy, making build/partner/buy decisions, managing model risk, and navigating user trust, data protection, and experience challenges across EMEA
• Ability to critically evaluate a company's AI strategy from the outside, including data assets, model dependencies, technical differentiation, competitive vulnerability, responsible AI posture, regulatory exposure, and the realism of AI-driven roadmap assumptions in EMEA markets
• Strong analytical capability: fluency using market research, customer data, competitive intelligence, and regional market signals to form defensible, evidence-based conclusions
• Exceptional written and verbal communication; able to translate product and technology complexity into concise narratives for non-technical executive audiences, including cross-border investment stakeholders
• Broad experience across enterprise software, B2B SaaS, and the full SDLC from discovery through delivery and growth, ideally with exposure to multiple EMEA markets
• Comfort working in fast-moving, ambiguous environments, often across multiple markets and time zones, with high accountability for output quality
  
  

Preferred

• Prior experience in management consulting, investment due diligence, or advisory roles serving PE-backed companies in EMEA
• Familiarity with private equity investment models, deal processes, and value creation frameworks used by EMEA investors
• Experience at or advising PE-backed software companies through periods of rapid growth, operational improvement, international expansion, or M&A across EMEA
• Vertical domain depth in one or more relevant EMEA markets or sectors (FinTech, HealthTech, GovTech, LegalTech, MarTech, HR Tech, industrial software, compliance-heavy software, etc.)
• Experience building or scaling product organisations, not just leading individual product lines, ideally across distributed or multilingual teams
• Exposure to sell-side advisory, exit preparation, or investor-facing product storytelling for EMEA or international buyers