Product Lead - New Venture, Wonderbly Group

Product Lead

• Contract role - 3–5 days per week, 6 months initially
• Location - Hybrid, Central London office
• Day rate - Up to £500 per day, depending on experience
• Reports to - Chief Product Officer, Wonderbly Group

The Opportunity

Wonderbly Group has spent years perfecting the art of personalised books, stories that put real people at the heart of the narrative. Now we're launching a new venture in an adjacent space that moves us deeply: helping people capture the memories, voices and stories of the people they love, and turn them into beautiful, lasting books and journals.

The bones of this business already exist. What we need is someone to help us reimagine it from the ground up: new technology, a new digital product, a transformed ecommerce experience and a fresh brand expression, while preserving the emotional heart of what makes this category so meaningful.

We’re looking for a builder, someone with a genuine passion for memory-keeping, personal storytelling and beautifully crafted print products. Whilst this is a contract role our perfect candidate is someone who could transition to become the Head of Product for this new brand once it launches.

What You'll Do

You'll take ownership of the new product from research through to a shipped, live experience, working alongside our in-house tech team, a talented editorial team and Wonderbly Group leadership. In practice this means:

• Leading user research to understand what customers want from a memory and legacy product: how they want to capture stories, who they're making books for, and what makes the end result feel precious
• Creating and iterating on design prototypes, from rough concepts through to polished, testable experiences
• Owning the digital product and ecommerce application roadmap: defining what we build and managing delivery with the in-house tech team
• Collaborating closely with our editorial colleagues to design new kinds of print-on-demand books and journals that are both beautiful and genuinely easy for customers to create
• Working with leadership to shape the brand expression of the new venture as it comes to life through the product
• Keeping stakeholders informed and aligned throughout; this is a small, fast-moving team and clear communication matters
• Get stuck in on any live product challenges with the existing business; whilst we transform the business there will be smaller product related tasks to keep the lights on and we want someone that can help with this

Requirements

Who We're Looking For

We're looking for someone who has done this before, shaped a digital product from early research to launch, and who brings genuine care for the subject matter. You should feel at home working both strategically and hands-on. You'll be a strong fit if you have:

• Demonstrable experience as a product lead or senior product manager on at least one consumer-facing digital product 
• Strong research and discovery skills; you know how to get to genuine insight, not just confirmation
• Experience creating design prototypes (you don't need to be a designer, but you should be comfortable working in tools like Figma or creating good AI prototypes)
• A track record of managing software delivery with a technical team: comfortable in sprints, writing clear specs, unblocking engineers and making sensible trade-off decisions
• Experience in or a strong affinity for ecommerce; you understand conversion funnels, customer journeys and what makes people buy
• An appreciation for craft: beautifully designed physical products, editorial quality and brand expression matter to you
• A genuine interest in memory-keeping, personal storytelling or the gift book category

Bonus if you have:

• Experience with print-on-demand products or the personalised gifts space
• Previous experience building or transforming a product for a new brand within a larger group
• An eye for brand and the ability to think across digital and physical product design