Product Management Executive Search

Hire Strategic Product Leaders: CPOs, VPs of Product, and Heads of Product

Product leadership sits at the intersection of customer value, commercial performance, and technical delivery. The difference between a high-growth product organization and one that stagnates is rarely the roadmap itself. It is the leadership behind that roadmap. At Solis Recruitment, we specialize in product management executive search and act as trusted product management headhunters for companies where product outcomes directly influence revenue, valuation, and long-term market competitiveness.

We execute retained and confidential searches for Chief Product Officers (CPO), VPs of Product Management, SVP Product, and Heads of Product who can align product strategy with clear business objectives, growth plans, and financial realities. Our firm operates at the highest levels of the market, ensuring that every product executive search we undertake is handled with the discretion and rigor required to secure transformative talent.

The Financial Reality of Product Leadership Hiring

In the current market, the cost of a mis-hire has never been higher. Research suggests that a mis-hire can cost a business more than three or four times the annual salary of a manager. When you move into the executive suite, that cost multiplies exponentially. Bringing in the wrong leader at the VP of Product or Chief Product Officer level can result in years of lost momentum, wasted engineering resources, and a demoralized workforce.

Clients engage Solis Recruitment when hiring product leadership is business-critical. We understand that a generic hiring process will not deliver the right outcome when scale, ambiguity, or market pressure is high. We partner closely with founders, CEOs, boards, and senior leadership teams across B2B SaaS, marketplaces, D2C, enterprise technology, and platform businesses. Our goal is to appoint product leaders who can operate effectively in the real world, rather than just relying on theory or frameworks.

We look for leaders who possess the operating judgment to know when to pivot, when to double down, and when to adopt an entirely new approach. They must be comfortable with the ambiguity of the messy middle of product development, where data might be incomplete and the stakes for the business are incredibly high. Beyond the vision and the strategy, these leaders must be people multipliers. We seek out executives who prioritise mentoring juniors and getting the best out of their teams, ensuring that the product organisation is resilient and capable of scaling alongside the business.

What Product Leadership Needs to Deliver in 2026

The expectations of product leadership have shifted materially. Capital is more disciplined, boards and investors are more involved, and product teams are expected to justify every pound of investment through measurable commercial impact. In 2026, high-performing product leaders must be able to translate a product vision into a clear commercial thesis. This thesis must support growth, margin, and retention objectives simultaneously.

Furthermore, a Vice President of Product Management must balance discovery, delivery, and scale without over-engineering solutions. They must align the product function closely with Product Marketing and Sales teams rather than operating in isolation. We assess product leaders on their ability to make confident prioritization decisions under constraint, especially when resources are limited. Successful leaders build teams that ship consistently and learn quickly, ensuring that the business remains agile even as it scales.

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Proven Experience Across Diverse Product Landscapes

At Solis Recruitment, we believe that every business has a unique challenge and a specific objective. Our role is to understand that nuance. We have successfully partnered with a wide array of organizations to solve complex hiring needs:

B2B SaaS and RegTech: We helped a high-growth RegTech business hire a VP of Product within just six weeks from brief to hire. This search required someone who could join the business urgently and immediately begin refining the product-led growth strategy.
IoT and Hardware: We helped an IoT business hire a Head of Product after the company had struggled to find the right profile directly. The challenge was finding a leader who balanced technical depth with commercial acumen, as many candidates were either too technically minded or lacked experience with the unique challenges of physical products.
Data and Analytics: We assisted a Cloud-based SaaS organization in hiring a Data Product Lead specifically tasked with commercializing their data offering. This required a leader who understood how to turn internal data assets into a revenue-generating product line.
eCommerce and Innovation: We have helped eCommerce businesses hire Product Leads to explore new innovations, including AR and VR. These leaders were brought in to drive digital modernization and ensure the brand remained at the cutting edge of customer experience.
Global Expansion: We have supported global businesses in their efforts to scale, frequently facilitating their first senior product hire in the UK.

Our networks extend across the US, UK, Europe, and the Middle East. Whether you are seeking Product Management Recruitment Agency services for a single hire or a long-term partner for Marketing Executive Search, we provide the reach and the expertise required to succeed.

Product Leadership in B2B SaaS and High-Growth Technology

B2B SaaS remains one of the strongest growth areas for product-led businesses, but it also demands a very specific type of product leadership. Hiring a product leader with consumer experience into a complex B2B SaaS environment is one of the most common and expensive mistakes we see. In the B2B SaaS world, product leaders are required to operate across multiple buyer and user personas, often with competing needs.

We routinely headhunt CPOs, VPs of Product, and Heads of Product who have led product within subscription-based revenue models and owned or influenced retention, expansion, and pricing decisions. Our role is to ensure product leadership hires are calibrated to the commercial reality of your SaaS business, rather than imported from an environment that looks similar on paper but behaves differently in practice. For businesses seeking broader leadership beyond product, we also offer Executive Search Overview services to provide a holistic view of the talent landscape.

Navigating Platform Complexity, Machine Learning, and AI

Artificial intelligence has moved from experimentation to expectation. Many organizations are now integrating AI features into core product experiences, workflows, or decision systems, and this places additional pressure on product leadership. Strong product leaders in AI-enabled environments do not need to be researchers, but they must understand where AI adds genuine customer and commercial value versus novelty.

We look for leaders who understand how Machine Learning (ML) has evolved into AI. While ML often focused on predictive analytics and pattern recognition, modern AI requires a leader who can manage generative models and agentic workflows. In our executive product search process, we test how leaders have used AI pragmatically. This includes their ability to manage build versus buy decisions, communicate AI strategy clearly to boards, and manage dependency risks associated with model providers.

Guardrails, Data Safety, and Compliance

In 2026, a senior product leader must be the steward of company data. As AI becomes more integrated into the tech stack, the risks associated with data safety and compliance grow. We prioritize candidates who understand the necessity of robust guardrails. This includes ensuring that AI implementations do not undermine customer trust or violate privacy regulations.

A modern VP Technical Product Management or Chief Product Officer must be fluent in the ethics of AI. They must ensure that the organization remains compliant while still moving at the speed of the market. This requires a level of Product Management maturity that only the top percentile of talent possesses. We assess how leaders manage risk, implement governance, and ensure that their AI strategy is both safe and scalable.

Product Leadership Roles We Recruit

We support organizations at different stages of product maturity, from making a first senior product leadership hire through to reshaping product at scale.

Executive Product Leadership

The Chief Product Officer (CPO) owns the product vision and portfolio strategy. They ensure alignment with company-level commercial objectives.

The Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) or SVP Product leads product at scale, often across platforms and engineering leadership.

The Vice President of Product Management is accountable for execution across multiple teams, product lines, or regions.

Senior Product Leadership

The Head of Product translates strategy into delivery, builds teams, and owns prioritization.

The Director of Product or Group Product Director leads specific product domains and develops the operating rhythm.

We also assist with Data Product Leads, Product Design, and Product Analytics leadership.

We help clients determine which layer of product leadership is actually required, then headhunt carefully to that mandate.

Product Leadership Challenges We Commonly Solve

Our firm is London led but maintains a global reach. We partner with organizations across the UK, Europe, the US, and the Middle East. This global network allows us to support international product leadership hires and discreet cross border searches. If you are looking for a Product Management Recruitment Agency, we are positioned to help. We have helped global businesses scale up and build their first senior hire in the UK, and we have helped established firms modernize their offerings through strategic appointments across these diverse markets.

Organisations typically engage us when they face challenges such as product teams that ship slowly or lack strategic clarity. We often solve for misalignment between Product, Marketing and Sales, or over invested roadmaps with limited measurable ROI. Our role is to provide leadership depth following funding, acquisition or international expansion. The need to professionalise product operations as the business scales is a frequent driver for our assignments.

We operate exclusively on retained product executive search assignments for senior level roles where discretion, rigour and judgement are essential. Our approach protects your brand, respects candidates and supports confident decision making at board and leadership level. We use technology to improve research and efficiency, but not to replace judgement. Executive product hiring is inherently human. It requires trust, context and credibility on both sides of the conversation.

Speak to a Product Executive Search Specialist

If you are hiring a Chief Product Officer, VP of Product, Head of Product or senior product leader, we welcome a confidential conversation about your goals, constraints and what success looks like. Contact Solis Recruitment to discuss your product management executive search.

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