Product Portfolio Manager

Location Outskirts of Canterbury
Salary Paying £70k - £100k DOE
Contract Permanent
Job Ref

Product Portfolio Manager (Commercial NPD) – Newly Created Role

Location: East Kent – Canterbury area (site based, with some flexibility)

Contract: Full time, permanent

Salary: £70,000–£100,000, depending on experience, plus bonus, car allowance and patent incentive scheme

Reporting to: Strategic Partnerships Director

The opportunity

A high-growth, profitable group in East Kent is creating a new Product Portfolio Manager role to lead the growth of its patented product business.

The product range is deliberately focused, with a small number of products already established with major UK infrastructure operators. Demand is now growing internationally and from adjacent markets. This role decides where the business competes and with which products: spotting market potential, building the case for new products and range extensions, and turning an established customer base into a much bigger opportunity.

This is a commercial role first. You don't need to be an engineer. You do need to understand technical language, read a design well enough to ask the right questions, and lead a capable technical team to deliver to plan. You will own the product roadmap and business cases, introduce a simple stage-gate process, and lead the Product Development Coordinator and Innovation Project Manager.

Nobody is leaving. This is a brand-new position, created because the business is in a strong position financially and in performance, and can see how much faster it could grow with someone focused entirely on this.

The culture, and who will fit

This is a professional, polite, genuinely team-first business, with a culture built over several years and excellent staff retention. Fit matters here as much as experience.

We are looking for someone who is hungry, humble and smart: ambitious to make a real impact, grounded enough to listen and learn from the people around them, and sharp enough to turn what they learn into a clear plan.

A deliberately wide salary band

The £70,000–£100,000 range is intentional. We are open to someone earlier in their product career with clear potential, and equally to an experienced product leader with a strong portfolio of achievements. Where you sit will reflect what you bring.

What you'll be doing

Product and market strategy

  • Build and own the product portfolio and a 3 to 5 year product and revenue plan for board approval
  • Decide which markets and applications to pursue, using market research, customer insight and clear business cases
  • Prioritise new products and improvements by value, risk and available resource
  • Test and validate new markets with real customers, alongside the Strategic Partnerships Director
  • Lead regular competitor reviews

Product development governance

  • Introduce and run a stage-gate process from concept through to launch and lifecycle
  • Present projects to the review committee that approves each gate, with design reviews supported by an external technical advisor
  • Own the project portfolio and a one-page view of every active project

Team leadership and delivery

  • Lead the Product Development Coordinator and Innovation Project Manager, owning the day-to-day pace of development
  • Make sure every project has an agreed plan, budget and resources before it starts, and hold the team to account for delivery
  • Plan for the team's growth as the portfolio expands

Intellectual property

  • Own the IP strategy, working with the group's external patent attorney
  • Run an invention disclosure process and quarterly review deciding what to patent, protect or publish
  • Make sure freedom-to-operate checks happen at the right stages

Commercial support

  • Give Marketing the positioning, product information and launch plans for each new product
  • Give Sales pricing input, value propositions and market entry plans
  • Act as the voice of the customer in the technical team, and the voice of the product in commercial discussions

About you

Essential

  • Experience in product management, commercial NPD or product portfolio leadership for physical B2B products
  • A track record of building a product roadmap or business case and delivering against it
  • Experience taking a product into a new market or application, ideally through to first paying customers
  • Technical fluency: comfortable with technical language, able to question engineering assumptions and judge risk without doing the engineering yourself
  • Strong commercial judgement, including business cases, pricing and margin analysis
  • Experience leading or coordinating a team to deliver to time and budget
  • Clear written and verbal communication, including presenting to senior leadership or a board
  • Based in, or open to commuting to, East Kent

Desirable

  • A background in infrastructure, utilities, telecoms, energy or industrial products
  • Experience of stage-gate or similar product development processes
  • Working knowledge of patents and IP strategy
  • An engineering or technical degree, or equivalent experience
  • Experience of international product launches

What's on offer

  • £70,000–£100,000, depending on experience
  • Bonus scheme, car allowance and patent incentive scheme
  • 24 days holiday plus bank holidays
  • A newly created role with a direct line from your decisions to the business's growth
  • Some flexibility around site-based working

Apply now

Consultant

Dan Gladwin

Director