Director, Product Development

We are seeking a Director of Product Development, Southern Europe to lead the AI evolution of our Human Capital Management (HCM) and Payroll solutions across Italy, Spain, and Portugal. This senior leadership role combines technology leadership, product development excellence, and organizational leadership to deliver innovative solutions that address the unique needs of our clients. A key focus of this role is driving the next generation of AI-powered experiences, transforming how HR professionals, payroll administrators, managers, and employees interact with our products. The successful candidate will lead the teams responsible for turning AI opportunities into scalable, secure, and impactful product capabilities.

Key Responsibilities
Lead Product Development Team
• Build, coach, and develop high-performing AI Enablement team.
• Partner closely with Product Management, UX, Data Science, AI CoE and regional business leaders to ensure successful delivery and adoption.
• Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, technical excellence, and customer obsession.
• Establish modern engineering practices that maximize quality, velocity, reliability, and security. Drive AI-First Product Experiences
• Define and execute the regional vision for AI-enabled experiences across Payroll, HR, Workforce Management, Talent, and Employee Engagement solutions.
• Lead the delivery of intelligent assistants, copilots, workflow automation, predictive insights, and agentic AI capabilities.
• Identify opportunities where AI can eliminate friction, reduce manual effort, improve decision-making, and create differentiated customer value.
• Establish measurable outcomes and success metrics for all AI investments. Influence Global Strategy
• Represent Southern European AI priorities within global product and technology forums.
• Advocate for regional needs while leveraging global platform investments and capabilities.
• Share innovation, best practices, and successful AI patterns across the broader organization.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior executives on AI strategy, technology innovation, and product development. Qualifications
• 10+ years of experience in Product Development, Software Engineering, Product Management, or Technology Leadership roles.
• Experience within Payroll, HCM, HR Technology, ERP, FinTech, or other highly regulated industries is a strong advantage.
• Demonstrated success delivering customer-facing AI capabilities and AI-enabled products at scale.
• Strong understanding of modern software architectures, cloud platforms, APIs, data platforms, and AI technologies.
• Experience operating in complex, global, and matrixed organizations.
• Strong commercial acumen and the ability to connect technology investments to measurable business outcomes.
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Fluent in English; Italian and/or Spanish is a strong advantage. What Success Looks Like Within the first 12 months, this leader will:
• Build and establish a focused AI Enablement team with clear ownership, strong engineering practices, and measurable business outcomes.
• Deliver a continuous stream of AI-powered capabilities across Southern European Payroll and HCM solutions.
• Launch AI experiences that measurably improve user productivity, compliance, and user satisfaction.
• Accelerate the adoption of AI-assisted development practices, improving both engineering efficiency and delivery speed.
• Position Southern Europe as a strategic innovation hub for AI-powered HR and Payroll solutions. Salary Range: 79.400€
- 174.600€ (Gross Annual) #LI-MS1 #LI-Hybrid