Product Director

This is a high-impact role at bol.com, the number one online retailer in the Netherlands and Belgium. With a team of 85 people and 15 dedicated scrum teams, the Product Director has both strategic and managerial responsibility for the main growth driver of the business: the marketplace platform and tooling.

About bol.com

Bol.com is leading the retail revolution in The Netherlands. The e-commerce platform makes daily life simpler for 12 million customers. Together with 42,000 partners who do business on the retail tech platform, bol.com offers over 28.5 million SKUs. In 2020, bol.com saw a 70 per cent year-on-year growth, resulting in an all-time high revenue of 4.3 billion euros. And those numbers will continue to rise significantly.

Bol.com is so far ahead of the industry that they are pioneering every step of the way. To stay ahead of the curve, their tech strategy focuses on three areas:

• Enabling partners to get their assortment online easily;
• Making partner-facing products function flawlessly at scale. Examples are the API, the retailer portal and all assortment interfaces;
• Monitoring platform-wide quality.

Bol.com is hiring a new Product Director for the Platform organization to take charge of these three focus areas and to stimulate innovative ways of working for the Product Organization. 

“This is an opportunity to develop, advocate and implement an innovative vision and strategy for our platform tooling and technical solutions, mostly from scratch. The Product Director will also bring our product organization to the next level.” – Margaret Versteden, Chief Platform Officer

Vacancy: Product Director

Technology at bol.com is divided into three domains: Platform, Logistics and Marketing. Each domain has a dedicated Product Director (Head of Product). This is a vacancy for a Product Director for the Platform Technologies department, responsible for the engine that enables third-party sellers to sell their products via bol.com. This business model is responsible for 50 per cent of revenue and 80 per cent of the growth of the whole organization. Chief Platform Officer Margaret Versteden is in charge of this entire retail platform business, the Product Director reports directly to her.

This is a co-leadership role responsible for the Platform Technologies department (200 FTE). Together with Tech Director Feike Groen, the Product Director will define and push the technical boundaries of this leading platform. The Product Director will also lead the Product Organization to a way of working that will cultivate creativity, innovation and speed. They will for example work to enhance collaboration between innovation-reliant teams. 

“This is a highly impactful role, making bol.com the one-stop shop for all its customers’ needs, while simultaneously safeguarding highly competitive partner propositions.” – Feike Groen, Tech Director

The Product Director will be the passionate leader who inspires, coaches, develops and empowers seven product teams (85 FTE in total), consisting of Product Managers, Product Owners, Analysts and Designers. The direct reports of the Product Director will be seven Product Managers, the Community Manager and the Domain Innovation Lead. To keep up with platform demands, the team will most likely need to double in size over the next few years. The Product Director will play an instrumental role in bol.com’s ongoing transition from online retailer to tech company. With this transition the responsibility and impact of the role will also increase over time.

The Product Director will be a driving force within the Innovation Leadership Council. They will align product development with the needs and ambitions of customers, partners and internal stakeholders. The Product Director will develop and implement the innovation strategy and roadmap towards future-proof, infinitely scalable platform technologies and tooling. This involves designing and owning a 70/20/10 (future/tomorrow/today) pipeline of strategic initiatives allowing for swift and continuous adaptation. 

Interested?

Bol.com is working with Top of Minds to fill this job position.
To express your interest, please contact Jessica Lim at jessica.lim@topofminds.com.