Director – Commercials (IT Product Development)

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES & TASKS:

• Provide strategic leadership for IT Products domain, ensuring alignment with business priorities and long-term goals.

• Inspire, empower, and develop teams across locations, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

• Drive the successful delivery of large-scale software products and programs, meeting agreed quality, budget, and timeline objectives.

• Partner closely with Product Managers and Cluster Managers to shape product strategy, set priorities, and accelerate execution.

• Act as a trusted liaison to senior stakeholders, ensuring transparency, clarity of scope, and effective resource allocation.

• Establish and champion standards for operational excellence, including risk management, governance, and measurable KPIs.

• Leverage technology and architecture as key enablers (e.g., cloud, automation, DevOps) to enhance scalability, reliability, and efficiency.

• Promote process innovation and agile ways of working to reduce time-to-market and increase value delivery.

• Build and sustain a high-performing, motivated team of Product Managers and IT professionals.

BEHAVIOURS & APPROACH:

• Proven leadership skills with the ability to inspire, mentor, and guide diverse teams across multiple locations.

• Strong strategic and operational mindset, balancing long-term vision with execution excellence.

• Flexible and adaptable, while maintaining a high degree of execution quality.

• Strong analytical and decision-making abilities, with a track record of solving complex challenges and driving outcomes.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, able to build trusted relationships at all organizational levels and across regions.

• Demonstrated ability to drive IT transformation while ensuring operational excellence and sustainable delivery.

WORK EXPERIENCE:

• Extensive experience in managing and delivering large-scale, business-critical software systems in complex organizations.

• A solid background with 10+ years in IT software development.

• At least 4 years of proven leadership experience in managing cross-location teams and delivering large-scale software systems.

• Strong foundation in modern software engineering and architecture practices.

• Hands-on exposure to:

o Java / J2EE and Microservices architectures

o Event-driven systems (e.g., Kafka)

o Relational databases (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL)

o Domain Driven Design (DDD)

• Proficiency in Agile ways of working (e.g., Scrum, SAFe, or similar frameworks) and ability to embed them at scale.

• Familiarity with program/project management practices (e.g., PMP, Prince2).

• Experience with cloud platforms (preferably AWS) as a driver for scalability, resilience, and modernization.

• Industry knowledge in Shipping or Logistics (Preferred).

• Experience in product transformation from legacy (e.g., mainframe) to modern cloud-based architectures (Preferred).

EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, economics, Engineering, or comparable discipline.