Freelance Group Product Manager – Future Platform

Freelance Group Product Manager - Future Platform

People & Products has been exclusively engaged by our client, an international B2B SaaS company, to hire an interim Group Product Manager for its platform transformation.

The situation

To unlock their next phase of growth, our client is taking decisive steps to reshape its platforms around what the business really needs. Their objective? Accelerate innovation and increase time-to-market, enable rapid experimentation and continuous iterations, while reducing OPEX, redundant logic, and features that no longer support the business.

The tech landscape, with dozens of current applications, a big legacy stack, 100+ microservices and hundreds of engineers, is, as you understand, quite fragmented, and requires a lot of critical engineering capacity, next to highly impacting speed of delivery.

Leadership is fully committed to serving its customers optimally by fundamentally changing the way products are built and delivered. As Interim GPM you’ll be shaping the future platform and how it serves the business and its customers best. This is a position that requires the authority, seniority and level of push-back at GPM+ level, where you manage the challenges at hand on both a strategic and a tactical level.

Your area

You are the product leader for the transition from the existing to the future platform. The aim is not a like-for-like transition, but to realize something simpler, more scalable and much more effective. You decide which logic, functionality, features and workflows move across, and how they’re bundled in products that truly serve the business. In your role, you challenge the business daily about what it really needs. You know how to push back, find out why complexity exists today and whether features and logic are still needed or not. You challenge architects and engineers when you notice that certain changes take months to build and release, and push back to deliver via an MVP approach. Ultimately, you also make the call when people disagree or no decision is made. The result: release faster, deliver sooner and quickly move towards the platform of the future.

What you'll do

• Shape the product vision and the concept for the future platform, based on what the business really needs.
• Resolve immediate legacy decommissioning bottlenecks with fast, decisive execution.
• Challenge the business and technology, question existing logic and cut what isn't truly needed, to migrate faster and leave legacy behind.
• Work closely with the business stakeholders on what's really needed and with engineering and architects, and lead the product managers functionally, building trust and taking ownership within the first weeks of engagement.
• Stand your ground and lead with a clear vision and direction.
• Translate strategy into concrete, measurable business impact, including a substantial increase in migration velocity and time-to-market.
• Contribute to the wider transformation of tech and help shape a high-performing Product organisation.
• Push the boundaries of what's possible with agentic AI across product and software development.

What we're looking for

• Proven experience as (interim) GPM, Head of Product, Director of Product or similar, ideally having had leading product roles within legacy migrations and/or replatforming initiatives.
• A senior product leader from the business side who understands platforms functionally (complex logic and features), is technically curious, and makes solid choices based on why the current complexity exists and whether it is still needed on the new platform.
• A strong leader who sets the course and comes across with confidence. Able to lead without formal authority and get stakeholders, including at leadership level, to commit to a direction.
• Affinity with agentic AI in product/software development is a plus.
• Available for a 12 month interim engagement, working remotely from NL, with periodic travel to European hubs.
• Minimum availability of 36 hours p/week, starting October/November latest.
• You are based in the Netherlands and already work as a freelancer/contractor (ZZP'er or through your own BV).

Interested?

Please share your CV, your availability (incl. start date and hours p/week), and your expected hourly rate.