Director of Product Management - AI & Platform Capabilities

Mon, 10/26/2026 - 08:34

About the role

Help shape how AI transforms the work of small businesses, accountants and bookkeepers.

As Director of Product Management, Small Business Platform Intelligence & Connectivity, you will own the strategy, roadmap and delivery of shared capabilities that connect trusted data, systems and agents to enable world-class AI-driven experiences across Sage and its ecosystem.

We want you to help us see where these technologies can make the biggest difference: saving customers time, helping them grow their businesses, improving their day-to-day work and making their lives easier. You will set a clear direction, make informed investment choices and turn that direction into capabilities and experiences that deliver measurable value.

You will lead a dedicated group of Product Managers and Product Owners, partnering with Product Management leaders, Engineers, Architects and UX Designers to deliver reusable platform capabilities. You will balance ambition with practical delivery, customer trust and the cost of operating AI at scale.

This is a hybrid role working 3 days a week in our Newcastle office.
Key accountabilities

Set the strategy and direction

• Own and evolve the product vision, strategy and roadmap for Small Business Platform Intelligence & Connectivity, aligned with Sage’s wider product and business priorities.

• Identify where Sage should invest, experiment, scale or stop. Make clear choices about the customer problems to solve and the capabilities needed to solve them.

• Bring an informed perspective on emerging AI technologies, market developments and ecosystem opportunities. Distinguish promising experiments from capabilities ready for dependable use at scale.

Connect opportunity with customer value

• Build a deep understanding of critical Accounting, Payroll and HR journeys, including how accountants and bookkeepers support small businesses.

• Work with product teams, research and design to identify opportunities to remove repetitive work, improve decisions and help customers complete tasks with confidence.

• Balance time savings, quality and ease of use with delivery effort and ongoing cost. Choose the appropriate approach for each problem, whether AI, machine learning or established automation.

Build intelligence that scales

• Define the direction for Small Business Platform Intelligence & Connectivity capabilities, enabling teams to build consistent AI experiences using shared capabilities rather than duplicating effort across products.

• Partner with Architecture and Engineering on the capabilities needed for agents and workflows, customer context, data access, integration, evaluation and monitoring.

• Make adoption practical through clear onboarding, documentation, integration patterns and a strong developer experience. Understand product team needs and use their feedback to improve the Factory.

• Work with partner and developer teams to enable appropriate external use of capabilities through secure APIs and tools, including MCP, where this supports the strategy.

Own delivery and the economics of AI

• Translate strategy into a prioritised roadmap with clear customer outcomes, milestones, dependencies and accountable owners. Align shared capability delivery with product launches.

• Lead decisions on priorities and trade-offs with Product, Architecture and Engineering. Resolve blockers, manage dependencies and communicate mitigation plans when delivery is at risk.

• Own the product investment case and track operating costs alongside benefits. Assess model and infrastructure choices with technical teams, including build, buy and reuse decisions.

• Set measurable success criteria before delivery and evaluate results after launch. Track customer adoption, task completion, time saved, quality, reliability and cost per successful task; use the evidence to improve or stop investments.

Deliver experiences customers can trust

• Embed responsible AI, privacy, security and appropriate controls into product decisions, working with Sage’s specialist teams and established governance.

• Ensure AI actions respect existing customer permissions and access rights. Define where customers need visibility, confirmation or control over automation and agent actions.

• Agree quality and evaluation expectations with technical teams, including accuracy, failure handling and monitoring, before capabilities are released and scaled.

• Lead people and influence across Sage

• Lead, coach and develop a dedicated group of product managers and product owners, setting clear expectations for product judgement, delivery and outcomes.

• Build strong relationships across Product Management, Architecture, Engineering, UX and commercial teams. Securing agreement on priorities, adoption, commitments and ownership.

• Communicate the strategy, evidence and decisions clearly to senior leaders, teams and partners. Encourage challenge and feedback, and build alignment through change.

What you will bring

Essential experience and capabilities

• Senior product leadership: Experience owning strategy, roadmap and outcomes for a complex platform or technical product portfolio at Director level or equivalent.

• Production AI delivery: A track record of launching and scaling AI capabilities, including generative AI or agentic experiences, with measurable improvements in quality, adoption and cost.

• Platform product management: Experience building shared capabilities that multiple teams or partners adopt to deliver valuable customer experiences.

• Technical fluency: Confidence working with engineers and architects on AI systems, APIs, integrations, data access and cloud platforms to assess feasibility and make informed trade-offs.

• People leadership: Experience developing product managers or product owners, strengthening their judgement and accountability for outcomes.

• Customer and commercial judgement: The ability to connect platform investment to customer needs, build credible business cases and prioritise competing opportunities.

• Leadership across boundaries: A record of resolving complex trade-offs and securing commitment across teams and senior stakeholders.

• Practical AI fluency: Hands-on use of AI tools for discovery, prototyping and analysis, with sound judgement about their outputs and limitations.

Additional experience that would be valuable

• Building agent frameworks, workflow orchestration, AI evaluation or observability capabilities, or developer platforms for AI.

• Working with MCP, secure tool access, agent interoperability or external developer and partner ecosystems.

• Delivering products where sensitive data, financial accuracy, permissions and auditability are central to customer trust.

• Experience in accounting, fintech, payroll, HR or software for small businesses and professional practices.

• Scaling shared capabilities across products, markets or complex technology estates.

What success looks like

• Small Business Platform Intelligence & Connectivity has a clear strategy and an agreed roadmap, with investment connected to priority customer and business outcomes.

• Product teams and partners can adopt shared capabilities more quickly and confidently, with increasing reuse and less duplicated effort.

• AI experiences deliver measurable improvements in the work customers do, including successful task completion, time saved and confidence in the result.

• Connectivity enables valuable workflows across Sage and its ecosystem, with clear access controls and a dependable developer experience.

• Quality, reliability and operating costs are understood and actively managed as adoption grows.

• The product managers and product owners have clear ownership, grow their capability and deliver effectively with their engineering, architecture, design and product partners.

At Sage, we offer you an environment where you can grow professionally without compromising your personal well-being. Our benefits package is designed to provide stability, flexibility, and balance:

Benefits video –

• Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage

• Work away scheme for up to 10 weeks a year

• On-going training and professional development

• Paid 5 days yearly to volunteer through our Sage Foundation

• Flexible work patterns and hybrid working

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