Sr Product Owner

As Product Owner – Platform Foundations, you will help shape the platform capabilities that enable other platform teams and engineering teams across Rituals to build, deploy, provision, operate and observe their products with confidence.

About the department: Tech & Data 

You will be part of our Technology Platforms organisation, where we create secure, scalable and easy-to-use platform foundations that accelerate delivery across our engineering landscape. Rituals is a fast-growing global company, expected to continue significant expansion in the coming years. This growth requires strong platform foundations that allow teams to deliver consistently, securely and at scale. 

Meet the team: Technology Platforms 

The Platform Foundations portfolio is delivered by the Cloud Center of Enablement team and the Monitoring & Observability team, consisting of approximately eight platform engineers and a Staff Engineer. Together, they create the reusableplatform capabilities that help engineering teams work faster, more safely and with less complexity. 

Your role: 

In this role, you will own the vision, roadmap and adoption of the Platform Foundations portfolio, which includes the Google Cloud Platform foundations, Enterprise Observability platform, self-service infrastructure provisioning, and platform guardrails related to security, IAM and FinOps. 

This is a strategic role at the heart of our shift from a project organisation to a product operating model. You will work closely with Platform Engineers, Staff Engineers, architects and engineering teams across Rituals. By combining product thinking with a strong understanding of cloud, observability and platform engineering, you will help create reusable capabilities that improve developer experience, operational reliability and engineering effectiveness across the organisation.

In this role, you will:

• Define the vision, strategy and roadmap for the Platform Foundations portfolio, including the continued evolution of Cloud Enablement and the establishment of our Enterprise Observability capability.
• Shape Platform Foundations as a platform-as-a-service offering, driving adoption of cloud enablement, observability and self-service capabilities that help teams deliver faster with less complexity.
• Lead the development of the Enterprise Observability vision, operating model and platform experience, helping establish a modern observability capability that scales across Rituals.
• Collaborate with the Staff Engineer Cloud & Observability and platform teams to translate technical strategy into clear priorities, platform capabilities and measurable improvements in developer experience.
• Work closely with fellow Product Owners across Technology Platforms to create a coherent platform experience for users, regardless of which platform capabilities they consume.
• Align stakeholders across Technology Platforms, Architecture, Security and engineering teams, ensuring transparency around priorities, dependencies and trade-offs.
• Use feedback, adoption insights and customer engagement to continuously improve platform capabilities, prioritisation and platform outcomes.
• Act as a product leader within Technology Platforms, championing customer-centric decision making, outcome-driven delivery and strong product practices across the platform organisation.

Bring all of you:

We are looking for someone who combines strong product ownership with a passion for platform engineering, developer experience and organisational change.

You understand that successful platforms are measured not by what is built, but by the value they create for the teams that use them. You enjoy working at the intersection of product, technology and stakeholder management, translating complex technical topics into clear priorities, decisions and outcomes.

You are comfortable operating in an evolving environment where platform capabilities, ownership models and ways of working continue to mature. You bring structure without becoming bureaucratic, create clarity in ambiguity and know how to balance speed, standardisation, autonomy and governance.

Just as importantly, you are an influential collaborator. You can challenge priorities, facilitate difficult trade-off discussions and build trust across teams with different perspectives and objectives. You help teams make better product decisions and are naturally curious about how platforms can continuously improve the experience of their users.

To be successful in this role, you bring:

• Significant experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager or similar role within technology, platform engineering, cloud, infrastructure or developer tooling environments. You are comfortable owning portfolios, roadmaps, backlogs and stakeholder alignment in complex technical domains.
• A strong platform mindset, understanding how platform-as-a-service offerings, self-service capabilities, paved roads and reusable building blocks help teams deliver faster, reduce cognitive load and maintain reliability, security and governance.
• Familiarity with platform engineering concepts and technologies such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD, observability, OpenTelemetry, Developer Experience (DX), Internal Developer Platforms (IDP), networking, IAM, DevSecOps, cloud governance and FinOps principles that help teams balance security, reliability, scalability and cost efficiency.
• Experience translating technical complexity into clear priorities, adoption strategies, business value and actionable product roadmaps, while maintaining credibility with engineers, architects and senior stakeholders.
• Strong stakeholder management and facilitation skills, with the ability to align diverse groups, navigate competing priorities and create clarity in complex environments. You know how to influence without relying on hierarchy and make trade-offs explicit.
• Experience driving platform adoption, customer engagement and continuous improvement through feedback loops, usage insights and measurable outcomes. You understand that platform success is defined by adoption and the value it creates for its users.
• The ability to introduce structure, improve ways of working and raise product maturity within teams, helping organisations evolve from delivery-focused execution towards product-led platform enablement. This includes effectively managing backlogs, facilitating delivery rhythms and helping teams continuously improve how they operate.
• A pragmatic and collaborative leadership style: you know when to standardise, when to stay flexible, and how to move teams forward through influence, trust and shared outcomes rather than authority alone

Work with Heart & Soul  
At Rituals, we are committed to care for everyone and strive to create a diverse workplace where all employees belong and have equal opportunities to succeed. Read more about our commitment here https://careers.rituals.com/en-NL/work-with-heart-and-soul/diversity-and-inclusion/

Location and Working Conditions
At Rituals, we believe in the power of connection: with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. That is why we work 80% from the office (typically four days per week) and 20% from home. Together, we bring our brand philosophy to life by transforming everyday routines into meaningful moments.

Your Steps to Your New Career

• A call with our recruiter, Renée, to go through practical details.
• The first interview with a team member and the hiring manager.
• Business case and Talogy assessments (Personality and Capability) to complete at home.
• The second interview.
• In the event of a positive outcome, you will receive a proposal with the terms of employment.

Any questions? Our recruiter Renée is happy to speak to you via renee.havenaar@rituals.com. Please note that applications via e-mail are not taken into consideration.