Role Overview
Oxford Nanopore Technologies is seeking a Senior Director of Software Product Management to define and lead the strategy, roadmap, and delivery of our software products across sequencing systems and applications. This role is accountable for ensuring that software platforms, tools, and experiences deliver clear customer value, scale with our technology, and enable successful adoption of our sequencing ecosystem.
The role acts as the integrative product leadership layer, taking strategic and tactical inputs from Sequencing Systems Product Managers and Applications Product Managers, and translating them into a coherent, prioritised software portfolio. The successful candidate will bring strong product leadership, technical depth, and the ability to operate across complex hardware–software–science boundaries.
Key Responsibilities
Software Product Strategy & Portfolio Ownership
1. Define and own the end-to-end software product strategy and roadmap, ensuring alignment with company objectives, platform evolution, and customer needs.
2. Integrate inputs from sequencing systems and applications product teams into a cohesive, prioritised software portfolio.
3. Lead trade-off decisions across platform capabilities, user experience, performance, scalability, and time-to-market.
Cross-Portfolio Product Leadership
4. Partner closely with Sequencing Systems PMs to ensure software capabilities effectively enable system performance, usability, and differentiation.
5. Work with Applications PMs to support application-specific requirements while maintaining platform coherence and reusability.
6. Balance platform-level investment with application-driven needs to avoid fragmentation and technical debt.
Product Development & Delivery
7. Provide product leadership across the software development lifecycle, from concept and requirements through delivery, launch, and ongoing evolution.
8. Ensure clear, actionable product requirements and success metrics are defined and communicated to engineering and data science teams.
9. Support new product introductions and major system launches with aligned, launch-ready software experiences.
Stakeholder & Executive Engagement
10. Act as the senior product voice for software at governance forums, representing customer, commercial, and technical perspectives.
11. Influence and align senior stakeholders across R&D, Engineering, Data Science, Commercial, Customer Support, and Operations.
12. Communicate product strategy, roadmap, and progress clearly to executive leadership.
Team Leadership & Capability Building
13. Build, lead, and develop a high-performing software product management team.
14. Establish best practices for software product management, including roadmap governance, prioritisation, customer insight, and lifecycle management.
15. Mentor senior product leaders and support succession planning within the function.
Required Experience & Skills
16. Extensive senior leadership experience in software product management within biotech sector.
17. Proven ability to manage platform software products serving multiple product lines or applications.
18. Strong experience working with engineering, data science, and systems teams on technically sophisticated products.
19. Demonstrated ability to synthesise diverse inputs into clear product direction and prioritised roadmaps.
20. Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills.
21. Comfortable operating in environments with high scientific, technical, or regulatory complexity.
22. Experience in life sciences, genomics, bioinformatics, diagnostics, or adjacent deep-tech sectors.
23. Background in software platforms supporting hardware-enabled or data-intensive products.
24. Experience scaling software products for global, diverse customer bases.
Why Oxford Nanopore
Oxford Nanopore Technologies is redefining sequencing through real-time, accessible analysis of DNA and RNA. This role offers the opportunity to shape the software foundation that underpins our sequencing systems and applications, enabling scientific discovery and real-world impact at global scale.