Head of Product

ROLE PURPOSE This role owns Nimbus Data Systems ’s Product Office and the multiple product streams within it. It is deliberately dual: you operate as a strategic product leader — owning the vision, portfolio and commercial trajectory across Nimbus Data Systems ’s two core product lines, Digital Identity (DI) and Identity & Verification (IDV) — while remaining hands-on in the craft: writing PRDs, running discovery, and staying close to the detail. You will lead and build at the same time. As the business grows, the scope and title of this role may grow with it. This is a senior leadership role reporting directly to the CEO, with full ownership of the Product Office — today spanning Product Management, Design/UX and Product Ops, with the product marketing narrative driven jointly with the Marketing team. It is a high-autonomy, high-accountability role: you will operate with significant independence, make consequential decisions at pace, and set the standard for product excellence. Operating in a technically sophisticated, security-sensitive biometric identity domain, the role demands strong product leadership, credible technical fluency, executive presence, and a native comfort with AI tools as everyday instruments of the trade. The Head of Product owns the “why, what and when” across both product lines: translating company strategy into a coherent, evidence-based portfolio for Digital Identity (DI) and Identity & Verification (IDV), setting the cadence and quality of delivery, and acting as the connective tissue that keeps engineering, sales, marketing and operations aligned around a shared product direction. ROLE TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES Product Strategy & Portfolio Leadership Define and own the product vision, strategy, and multi-horizon roadmap across all product lines, aligned to company OKRs and the evolving digital identity landscape Translate business strategy into clear product goals, prioritised initiatives, and measurable outcomes across the full portfolio Make high-stakes trade-off decisions across the portfolio, balancing customer value, technical feasibility, security requirements, regulatory and security compliance (POPIA, FICA, ISO 27001), and commercial impact Set the direction for the PI Planning process, ensuring all product streams enter each increment well-prepared with clear features, dependencies, and objectives Actively widen Nimbus Data Systems ’s competitive moat through deep market awareness, continuous innovation, and well-timed feature investment decisions Maintain a structured view of the competitive landscape, regulatory environment, and emerging standards in biometrics and digital identity Lead technology forecasting for the identity and biometric space, tracking emerging capabilities (AI-powered liveness, decentralised identity, evolving biometric standards), evaluating their relevance to the roadmap, and making proactive investment recommendations before the market forces the decision Identify and evaluate adjacent product opportunities — new verticals, geographies and use cases — and make board-ready recommendations on where to invest Team Leadership, Culture & Executive Presence Lead and develop the existing Product Office, raising the bar on quality, ownership, pace and continuous improvement; scale the team over time as the business grows Build a culture of rigour, ownership, speed and psychological safety across the product function Set and uphold the hiring bar for product roles — define what great looks like, and ensure Nimbus Data Systems attracts and retains exceptional product talent Own design direction and UX standards across the portfolio — establishing principles, quality benchmarks, and a consistent, secure user experience Coach and develop product talent, creating an environment where people grow, deliver and thrive Operate as a member of the senior leadership team — contributing to company strategy and cross-functional decisions, not just the product function Develop, implement and measure clear team KPIs and OKRs to drive accountability and continuously uplift performance Discovery, Research & Customer Insight Establish and drive structured discovery processes across the portfolio, using AI tools to accelerate the depth and breadth of market, customer and competitive insight Engage directly with enterprise customers, integration partners and strategic accounts to surface requirements and validate product direction Synthesise customer interviews, support trends, usage data and commercial feedback into actionable, decision-ready product intelligence Ensure continuous assumption validation through structured experimentation, pilots and rapid iteration Champion a culture of evidence-based decision-making and customer-centricity throughout the product team Backlog Ownership & Prioritisation Own the portfolio-level backlog: ensure it is well-defined, prioritised and clearly documented across all product streams, with the detailed grooming owned by the Product Managers Create clarity by defining wh