Head of Product

Introduction

Saab UK is part of Scandinavia’s largest defence company, bringing together the best of Swedish and British innovation. Saab offers world-leading solutions and services in defence, aviation, space, and civil security to keep people and society safe. Our UK presence has been growing at pace, meaning we can offer a wide range of opportunities for personal fulfilment and career growth. We currently employ over 600 people across eight sites in the UK, and our specialisations include software engineering, underwater robotics, radars, AI, and armed forces training.

What you will be part of

Saab is a leading defence and security company with an enduring purpose, to help nations keep their people and society safe.

Empowered by its 28,000 talented people, Saab constantly pushes the boundaries of technology to create a safer and more sustainable world.

Saab designs, manufactures and maintains advanced systems in aeronautics, weapons, command and control, sensors and underwater systems.

Saab is headquartered in Sweden. It has major operations all over the world and is part of the domestic defence capability of several nations.

Role Purpose

To lead management of our product suite, ensuring long-term value creation, commercial viability and delivery readiness. This role is accountable for driving investment in modern, scalable products that meet the demanding needs of public safety organisations while supporting sustainable growth and operational efficiency across the business.

Key Responsibilities

Product & Strategy Leadership

• Own and drive the product portfolio strategy, ensuring alignment with company goals, market needs, and customer expectations.
• Define investment priorities and shape the roadmap to modernise and extend SAFE and its sub-products.
• Using Saab GMS Product Lifecycle Management, identify and grow scalable, high-value opportunities across UK and international markets.
• Govern portfolio-level product decisions, balancing standardisation with flexibility to support faster delivery and post-go-live capability.

Commercial Alignment

• Collaborate with Sales, Finance, and Operations to ensure product positioning, pricing and packaging are commercially viable and operationally deliverable.
• Lead efforts to improve understanding of product cost contribution, pricing models, and margin protection.
• Act as a senior stakeholder and decision maker in bid governance, helping to prevent overpromising and ensuring feasibility aligns with product capability.
• Influence senior leaders across Sales, Finance, Development, and Operations to align product decisions with commercial goals, technical feasibility, and delivery capability ensuring sustainable, joined-up outcomes across the business.

Technology and Architecture

• Lead the team accountable for defining our technology direction, architectural strategy, and technical governance (including our Technical Design Authority).
• Ensure the product portfolio is underpinned by modern, scalable, and supportable technology aligned to long-term business goals.
• Provide strategic direction and prioritisation support to technical leaders, enabling sound architecture and technology investment decisions.

Team Leadership

• The role carries full line management responsibility for a cross-functional team comprising of Product Owners. This includes day-to-day oversight, objective setting, performance management and professional development.
• A key focus is maintaining a strong and resilient leadership pipeline, with particular attention to succession planning within the Technical Design Authority to ensure continuity of architectural vision and strategic capability.
• The post-holder is expected to build and nurture a high-performing leadership group that enables alignment across product strategy, technology direction, and quality assurance.

Senior Leadership Team Responsibilities

As a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), the role holder is expected to:

• Take collective ownership for business-wide strategy, performance, and key decisions.
• Collaborate across functions to support shared goals and avoid siloed ways of working.
• Ensure clear, consistent communication of business-critical information across the organisation.
• Contribute constructively to SLT discussions, promoting healthy debate and joint accountability for outcomes.

Key Measures of Success

• Increased product control and clarity over roadmap priorities.
• Improved cost visibility and investment decision-making.
• Increased sales, margins, and customer satisfaction driven by stronger product-market fit and commercial governance.
• Reduction in project risk and bid failure due to better alignment between what is sold and what can be delivered.