Director, Product Management

Basic Function

The Director of our new Innovation team "InnovateHub" is a strategic and executional leader responsible for driving innovation across the organization. This role will lead a matrixed innovation function with a start-up mindset, focused on identifying, validating, scaling and delivering new business opportunities, product concepts, and agentic customer experiences with speed. Reporting directly to the Segment Leader, the Director of InnovateHub ensures alignment with cross-functional partners including Digital Experience Group (Dxg), Development, Legal, Operations, Marketing, Sales, and Service Excellence. This role plays a critical part in fostering a culture of innovation and advancing differentiated value for the Tax, Firm, and Audit functions. This role will be responsible for defining and executing strong Go to Market strategies to drive growth.

Essential Duties and responsibilities

• Define and lead the innovation strategy across the Tax & Accounting (TAA) Professional segment. Partner with the Segment Leader and Product Management to prioritize high-impact, customer-validated initiatives aligned with business goals and growth objectives.

• Continuously scan the market, competitive landscape, and customer feedback to identify whitespace opportunities, unmet needs, and emerging trends. Translate insights into validated business cases and product concepts.

• Drive the integration of AI, automation, and agentic systems into customer-facing solutions. Collaborate with platform and engineering teams to embed intelligent, self-guided capabilities that enhance user efficiency and experience.

• Own the full lifecycle of idea incubation-from early discovery and customer research through prototyping, testing, market fit analysis, and go-to-market readiness, inclusive of monetization. Apply lean innovation practices to iterate rapidly and validate desirability, feasibility, and viability.

• Operate in a matrixed environment to align efforts across Product, Engineering, Dxg, Operations (Xpirax), Sales, Marketing, and Service Excellence. Ensure visibility, coordination, and shared accountability for innovation execution and scaling.

• Partner with go-to-market teams to ensure smooth transitions from concept to commercial launch. Develop positioning and messaging frameworks for new offerings in collaboration with Marketing and Sales.

• Maintain a customer-centric design with deep understanding of the workflows, challenges, and expectations of accounting firms and tax professionals. Ensure that all innovation initiatives are grounded in real customer problems and deliver tangible value.

• Define, track, and report on key innovation KPIs such as customer engagement, time-to-validation, revenue potential, and scalability. Success will be evaluated by metrics including number of concepts progressed to MVP (minimum valuable product), early usage in initial stage gates for beta testing, revenue generated from launched initiatives, adoption rates, and average time from concept to pilot. Regularly communicate progress, outcomes, and learnings to executive stakeholders.

• Act as a strategic thought partner to senior leadership. Share insights on industry disruptions, competitive dynamics, and emerging technologies. Provide guidance on long-term innovation roadmaps and pilot program implications.

• Build and lead a high-performing, entrepreneurial innovation team. Foster a culture of curiosity, bold thinking, and continuous learning, while maintaining a disciplined, metrics-driven approach to experimentation.

Other Duties

Performs other duties as assigned by supervisor.

Job Qualifications

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field or equivalent experiences

• Master's degree (MBA, MS in Innovation, or related field) preferred

Experience:

• 10+ years of experience in product innovation, strategy, or transformation roles

Other Knowledge, Skills, Abilities or Certifications:

• Proven track record of launching successful products or services from concept to market

• Proven track record of defining go to market strategies, inclusive of pricing definition through to sales readiness

• Deep understanding of agile methodologies, lean startup principles, and customer-centric design

• Strong business acumen with ability to evaluate opportunity size, customer impact, and strategic fit

• Experience working in or with cross-functional, matrixed environments

• Familiarity with AI, data-driven platforms, and emerging technologies

• Exceptional communication and leadership skills with ability to influence at all levels

Travel requirements

30% Domestic Travel

Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.