Fractional Product Practice Leader (9-month contract)
Tails.com · Personalised dog nutrition, a B Corp backed by Purina, London.
- Location
- Hybrid, Richmond (London)
- Hours
- About 2 days a week
- Length
- Fixed term, about 9 months
- Start
- Mid-November 2026, with a 2 to 3 week handover
- Rate
- Not listed
- Experience
- 15+ years in product, including leading product teams as Head of Product, Director or VP
- Works with
- Chief Technology and Operations Officer
- Source
- Tails.com careers page
- Added here
- 18 Sep 2026
Maternity cover for the craft and mentoring half of the Director of Product and Proposition's role. The brief is how the team works, not where the roadmap goes.
Tails.com describes this as a craft and people role. For about nine months you cover the product practice side of the Director of Product and Proposition's job while she is on maternity leave, reporting to the Chief Technology and Operations Officer.
Half of it is process: give the team a discovery practice and an experimentation framework it can run without you, tighten how product and engineering collaborate, build AI tooling into the team's daily work, and connect product outcomes to the financial forecast. The other half is mentoring: a peer-level thought partner for the Head of Product, steadying the team through change and setting the bar for product craft across the company.
What you will do
- Design and embed a discovery process the team runs consistently, with or without you in the room
- Set up an experimentation framework: how tests are prioritised, run and evaluated
- Improve how product and engineering work together day to day
- Build the team's capability in AI tooling that is relevant to their actual work
- Connect product outcomes to financial forecasting and the P&L
- Act as a peer-level thought partner and mentor to the Head of Product
- Support the team through a period of change and champion product craft across the organisation
What the posting asks for
- 15+ years in product, including leading and managing product teams in a permanent senior role
- Senior product experience across both physical and digital products
- Time spent working directly with in-house software engineering teams
- A strong grounding in discovery and experimentation inside modern, dual-track, agile product teams
- Stakeholder management and the ability to set boundaries
Nice to have
- D2C or subscription business experience
- Oversight of both product management and product design
- Familiarity with Optimizely or a comparable experimentation platform
This is the closest thing to a product coach's job description you will see posted: two days a week, a discovery process and an experimentation framework to leave behind, and a Head of Product to mentor. The rate is not public, so anchor on your day rate for practice-building work, not on an interim executive rate.
Tails.com makes individually tailored dog food and sells it by subscription, direct to consumers. It is a certified B Corp with Purina behind it, and it works with an in-house product, design and engineering team.
How to apply
This is a syndicated job post. We found it on the web and are not working with the company directly, so we do not control the application process and cannot see what happens after you apply. To apply, open the application on the company's page and follow its instructions. Tell us how it goes. Applications go through the Tails.com careers page.
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