Director of Product Development

Role overview

Join a confidential client through Panthr for a senior product leadership role focused on deciding what gets built, when it is built, and the reasons behind each decision. The position leads the full product development function and connects executive priorities, engineering execution, clinical and regulatory obligations, and customer results.

The organization describes itself as a straightforward talent-matching partner that supports candidates and employers with a transparent, data-informed recruitment process. The client for this role is not disclosed.

Key responsibilities

• Work with Marketing and consumer insights to shape a 12–18 month roadmap, tie it to company OKRs, and share it with the executive team on a quarterly basis.
• Lead the product development group, including manager-level direct reports across engineering, design, and clinical/regulatory partnership functions.
• Guide the existing engineering team by aligning on technical direction with the engineering lead, enabling independent release decisions, keeping process lightweight for a small team, and resolving product-versus-engineering trade-offs.
• Make build, buy, or partner calls for new capabilities and support the recommendation with analysis of cost, speed to market, and risk alongside Finance and Marketing.
• Coordinate alignment across Clinical/Medical, Regulatory, Marketing, and Sales stakeholders.
• Sign off on all software releases based on quality, security, and clinical-safety requirements, including SOC 2 and HIPAA where relevant.
• Own the discovery process with Marketing, covering customer research, problem framing, hypothesis testing, and ensuring major features do not ship without discovery.
• Recruit, coach, and if needed separate product managers, while creating the team’s career structure and review rhythm.
• Champion the AI and tooling roadmap, including AI used in discovery, AI-powered product features, and agentic workflows for internal operations.

Candidate profile

The ideal applicant brings senior-level product management or product development experience, has led high-performing teams, and is comfortable in both regulated health-tech settings and fast-moving SaaS environments. The role calls for a leader who can balance compliance, customer needs, and commercial outcomes while driving product strategy through research, experimentation, and data.

Experience and background

• Strong experience across both B2B and B2C product motions, or deep experience in one with a strategic transition into the other.
• A track record of building product innovation practices such as horizon planning, opportunity identification, prototyping, and kill criteria.
• Hands-on leadership in customer research methods such as ethnography, jobs-to-be-done interviews, diary studies, and contextual observation, with the ability to turn findings into strategy.
• Active use of continuous discovery practices, including opportunity-solution trees, weekly customer interviews, and outcome-tracked hypotheses.
• At least 10 years in product management or product development, with 4+ years leading product teams of 3 or more direct reports.
• Ownership of an end-to-end roadmap for at least one software product that reached $5M+ ARR or 25K+ active users, with the ability to explain discovery, delivery, and results.
• Experience shipping software in a regulated health setting with HIPAA at minimum; FDA 510(k), SaMD, or HITRUST exposure is a strong advantage.
• Working knowledge of modern product practices such as continuous discovery, opportunity-solution trees, JTBD, OKR-based roadmapping, and dual-track agile.
• Experience owning a product P&L or gross-margin contribution for at least two consecutive years and presenting results to executives.
• Prior success hiring and managing product managers, including making and correcting a poor hiring decision within 90 days.
• Ability to interpret API contracts, system architecture diagrams, and clinical workflow diagrams, and to challenge technical and clinical experts constructively.
• Regular experience presenting product strategy to a CEO, board, or clinical advisory board on at least a quarterly basis for 2+ years.
• Direct leadership of an engineering team, in-house or distributed, while partnering with an engineering lead on architecture and delivery.
• Hands-on collaboration with engineers on feasibility, sprint planning, and releases, with comfort being challenged on scope and estimates.

Capabilities sought

• Product leadership in B2B SaaS, health technology, digital health, or EHR-adjacent software.
• Direct involvement with FDA SaMD pathways and post-market surveillance.
• Experience developing features in regulated environments.
• Ability to make and defend build-versus-buy-versus-partner decisions under pressure.
• Experience creating a product discovery practice from the ground up and operating it consistently.
• Judgment to balance health-tech rigor, such as substantiation and audit trails, with software speed, including experimentation and telemetry.

Additional information

This is a confidential client engagement. The employer, the client’s name, and the specifics of compensation were not disclosed in the source information.