Head of Product

About Bark

Bark is revolutionising the way people find professionals in over 1,000 unique categories. As the UK's largest and fastest-growing services marketplace, we're on a mission to make finding the right professional quick and easy. With a presence in eleven countries and plans for further expansion, joining us at this genuinely exciting time will be a journey like no other.

Our cutting-edge technology ensures that you can always find the best professional for any job. With a talented team of over 200 dedicated individuals, we're committed to providing exceptional service and ensuring that our customers are satisfied every step of the way.

This is an exciting time to join our scaling business, we recently placed in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2024, and previously were 64th in the Sunday Times 100 fastest growing private tech companies in 2023.

About the role

We are looking for a gifted Head of Product to join our team and take ownership of our Professional proposition. They are at the heart of Bark, fulfilling the jobs our Consumers come to us to get done, and their success is our success. Reporting into the CPO, your role will be to define how we attract the best service providers to our platform, and how we provide them value through winning jobs and helping to grow and manage their business.

This is a fascinating time to join, as we transform our already highly profitable lead-gen model into a hybrid Marketplace, with the goal of generating more business between Consumers and Professionals across nearly 1,000 categories. You’ll focus on driving user satisfaction and retention, with huge scope to define the future of our platform achieve this - we’re open to big changes to achieve our big ambitions!

Your remit will span 3 cross-functional squads focused on the success of our Professionals, but this is likely to expand as we continue to increase the focus on the Professional side of our Marketplace. Your target user will be 2-10 person SMEs, 

You’ll fit right in if you’re obsessed with understanding and solving these businesses’ problems at scale, love thinking big but relish data and detail, and are passionate about building high-performing teams. We’d love to hire someone with a track record of having worked across multiple Product teams in a marketplace context before, and especially so if you’ve got experience of delivering Product-led growth.

We’re already profitable and incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved so far, but we know that most of our work is ahead of us. We have huge aspirations, and our growth plans are product-led, so it’s a great time to join and contribute to revolutionising how people buy and sell services online, in the way that Amazon did for physical products.

Responsibilities

• Set the vision and strategy for Bark’s Professional experience, ensuring it’s aligned with our overall vision and optimised for the success of 2-10 person SMEs

• Align and inspire across the Product team and the wider business, from C-suite to Customer Support teams, including leading cross-functional working groups as part of Bark’s operational structure

• Manage and coach a team of Product Managers, helping them to be exceptional across all 4 of our Product Management competency areas - Business Impact, Execution, User Insight and Strategy & Leadership

• Assist in designing an organisational structure that maximises our chances of success

• Accelerate autonomous decision-making within our agile squads through clarity of priority and strategy

• Contribute to the efficiency of our outcome-centric discovery and delivery processes, providing impactful feedback on work at all stages

• Obsess over our users and lead others to do the same. Use qual and quant inputs to understand them better than anyone and shape our strategy

• Take real ownership of the impact of your squads, helping them balance iterative wins with longer-term strategic change

Required skills and experience

• Proven track record as a leader in Product Management working in a fast-paced and successful online business

• Experience in working on a Marketplace product, and an understanding of the needs of SMEs that provide services

• Experience building effective Product strategies, supporting teams to deliver them and driving Product-led growth (growth Marketing expertise are a bonus)

• Expert in using both qual and quant data points to form user understanding, and conclusions, and guide decision making

• Collaborated and managed a diverse range of stakeholders outside across Design, Engineering, Insights, Marketing, Sales, Finance, Customer Support and HR

• Excellent communicator - you’re able to clearly present your ideas, explain your thinking, and discuss detail confidently at all levels

• Well-versed in lean approaches and agile methodologies to minimise waste and maximise impact

• A self-starter that is comfortable working autonomously, whilst always remembering collaboration is key to success

• Driven, ambitious and keen to grow with the company

• Nice to have: Experience building products for small businesses, or service businesses.

Perks and Benefits

• Share options in a rapidly growing company whose founders have a proven track record and are Private Equity backed

• Flexible working policy with a central office in London

• Private health insurance run by Bupa

• Personal annual L&D Budgets to spend on your development

• Enhanced Gympass membership for all employees with access to mental health courses and fitness classes

• Fully stocked kitchen and monthly lunches

• Cycle to work scheme

• Regular wellness weeks with industry leading talks through to massages in the office

• Being at the forefront of an industry with new and exciting problems to solve

Interview Process

• Screening Call with Talent Partner (30 mins)

• 1st Stage - Interview with CPO or Director of Product (30 mins)

• 2nd Stage - Technical Task (120 mins)

• 3rd Stage - Final interview (60 mins)

• 4th Stage - Interview with stakeholders (can be combined with final interview)

Diversity Statement

At Bark, we are a platform for people, revolutionising the way professionals and individuals connect since 2014. Our culture is defined by excitement, ambition, and a commitment to raising the bar. We value diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) and are dedicated to embedding these principles into everything we do. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive, and our focus is on hiring, retaining and developing a globally diverse workforce that is passionate about excelling our platform and supporting our customers succeed. Be part of our dynamic team, where bold ideas thrive, and create a future worth shouting about.