Product Owner Lead at Pick n Pay Stores Limited

• A Product Owner Lead is a senior-level position in a company's product team. The role is responsible for overseeing the development of key products and services alongside the product owners in the Pod.
• The Product Lead maintains the overarching Pod product's vision while supervising product owners who focus on elements of the product and various features. They work closely with cross-functional teams of engineers, designers, and marketers to ensure that the final product is valuable to target customers.
• A major part of the Product Lead's role is to train and mentor the product owners to ensure they are aligned with the product vision and understand their roles and responsibilities.
• With a combination of technical, business, and leadership skills, a Product Owner Lead is well-equipped to drive the success of a product and contribute to Omni-channel’s growth.
• Previous working experience as a Senior Product Owner in e-commerce
• Certified as Scrum Product Owner
• Experience managing Product Owners
• Degree or diploma in Computer Science, Engineering or similar relevant field is beneficial, but not required.
• Experience in building and running customer facing ecommerce websites and apps.
• Experience in the measurements and KPI’s required to track the performance of an ecommerce business.
• In-depth knowledge of Agile process and principles
• Proficient in the Atlassian tool suite
• Outstanding communication and presentation skills
• Excellent organisational and time management skills
• Sharp analytical and problem-solving skills
• Creative thinker with a vision
• Attention to details
• Excellent at collaboration and influencing

Set Vision and direction

• Contribute to creating and evolving the company-wide product strategy with the leaders of the division.
• Own the Pod strategic roadmap and ensure alignment with organisational goals and market demands.
• Create and maintain the Pod product strategy alongside your product team
• Own and drive the Pod Annual strategy sessions to ensure KPI alignment with the business and the Product roadmap
• Collaborate closely with marketing on product launch strategy
• Be close to and represent the data or research findings of how your product/platform users behave and what they want/need
• Demonstrate leadership and communication skills with success in influencing all levels cross-functionally
• By staying abreast of market trends in eCommerce technology and our competitors, you will be able to provide guidance.
• You will be responsible to communicate this product pod vision to all key stakeholders across the broader organisation.

Build the team

• Build a strong, high-performing, highly engaged team through development, coaching, clear goal setting and attention to morale & culture
• Create a positive team environment that expects high performance, instils trust, and ensures clear communications and alignment
• Delegate well, enabling the product pod to work effectively and efficiently, with the right level of scrutiny and oversight, without overloading your own diary
• Establish strong relationships with diverse teams spanning all organisational levels
• Recruit, manage and guide your team to the next level, ensuring that Pick n Pay Omni-channel secures and develops the best talent
• Mentor and develop senior POs, preparing them for higher leadership roles.
• Champion a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within the product management team

Product Performance & Optimisation

• Bring a high degree of commerciality, with a focus on customer and business impact, ensuring the commercial sustainability of products we launch. Make decisions, strategy, priority, impact visible and understood via roadmaps, one-pagers, reports, and (most important) great conversations.
• Measure and present results and progress toward product goals.
• Lead on selecting product input metrics that influence the strategic business output metrics and contribute to establishing KPIs
• Define the necessary metrics and reporting to continuously track the performance of the product.

Encourage Product Excellence in Process & Delivery

• Lead Product initiatives to improve product practices and processes.
• Ensure your team is focused on the right priorities, aligned with the strategy and our target customer segments, and quantified/prioritised using tools such as MOSCOW and Business scoring.
• Coach on the scope and approach for initiatives - prioritise time to market using a minimum viable product. Challenge hard on must haves versus nice to haves. Ensure the discipline of hypothesis driven development.
• Ensure Product one pagers are developed with usefulness for the entire organisation, defining the product challenge/opportunity and with appropriate approach to the solution.
• Ensuring all product owners manage and maintain their domain roadmaps.

Competencies

• Strategic thinker with the ability to set and communicate product vision.
• Skilled at building and mentoring high-performing teams.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder management.
• Commercially minded, with analytical skills to drive product performance.
• Process-oriented, focused on continuous improvement and delivery excellence.
• Excellent communicator, able to influence and align diverse groups.
• Innovative, with a passion for driving change and fostering a culture of growth.

End Date: January 9, 2026