Director of Product, Strategic Ventures
HighlightTAHighlightTA is the on-demand talent team for Zipline.
About Zipline
Zipline is a well-funded, rapidly growing SaaS company transforming how frontline teams work. We empower the world’s leading brands across retail, healthcare, logistics, and beyond to connect, align, and inspire their employees—from headquarters to the front lines. Our customers consistently give us best-in-class NPS and CSAT scores, and they rave about how Zipline makes their teams’ lives easier and their businesses more effective. We’re also a fully remote company, with passionate employees across the U.S., Canada, and around the globe.
About the Role
Zipline is entering its next phase of growth—expanding into new verticals, unlocking new revenue motions, and exploring AI-enabled and partnership-led opportunities beyond the current product footprint.
The Director of Product, Strategic Ventures owns Zipline’s future growth portfolio. This role is accountable for identifying, validating, and de-risking new sources of revenue—including vertical expansion, horizontal product extensions, AI-powered commercial offerings, and strategic partnerships—before they are scaled into core product teams. This is a senior, high-impact product leadership role operating ahead of the roadmap. You will work across Product, Design, Engineering, Data, Sales, CS, RevOps, and Corporate Development to turn ambiguity into conviction. You are responsible for deciding what to bet on, why, and when, not for owning long-term execution of core product pillars.
You report to the SVP of Product and act as a force multiplier for pillar Product Managers by supplying validated opportunities—not competing roadmaps.
What You’ll Do
Own the Strategic Growth & New Ventures Portfolio
Identify, frame, and size new growth opportunities across:
New verticals and customer segments
Horizontal product extensions and modules
AI-powered commercial offerings
Strategic partnerships and ecosystem plays
Maintain a transparent, prioritized portfolio of short-, mid-, and long-term bets
Define clear investment theses, success criteria, and kill / scale decision points
Build rigorous business cases, including TAM, ROI, cost-to-serve, and GTM implications
Lead 0→1 Discovery & Validation
Run early-stage discovery to understand unmet customer needs and market gaps
Partner with Design to prototype and test value propositions quickly
Collaborate with Engineering and Data to validate technical feasibility (without owning core platform design)
Execute controlled pilots and proof points that produce executive-ready evidence
For select initiatives, this role may temporarily own scoped delivery during incubation to validate customer value and commercial viability. This ownership is explicitly time-bound, limited in scope, and transitions to a core product team once the opportunity is proven
Make clear recommendations to scale, pivot, partner, or stop
Drive Vertical & Market Expansion
Assess and prioritize new verticals with strong commercial and strategic fit
Define vertical-specific problem spaces, workflows, and value propositions
Partner with Sales and CS on early customer engagement and GTM validation
Recommend market entry strategies, sequencing, and success metrics
Shape AI-Enabled Growth Opportunities (Without Owning Core AI Systems)
Identify AI-powered opportunities that unlock new revenue, differentiation, or market access
Partner with pillar PMs and Data Science to validate feasibility and customer value
Focus on commercial potential and market fit, not long-term ownership of AI platforms or intelligence layers
Transition validated AI opportunities into appropriate product pillars for scaling
Partnerships & Corporate Development Support
Collaborate with Corporate Development on product-fit assessments for partnerships and M&A
Define product strategy inputs for partner-led offerings
Evaluate build vs. buy vs. partner tradeoffs from a product and revenue perspective
Build Repeatable Growth Systems
Establish frameworks for discovery, validation, piloting, and business casing
Create operating mechanisms that accelerate decision-making and reduce risk
Over time, hire and lead a small team focused on strategic growth and incubation
What This Role Explicitly Does Not Own
Long-term ownership of core product pillars or platform roadmaps
Execution, delivery, or optimization of in-market product experiences
Ongoing ownership of analytics, AI platforms, or intelligence systems
Feature-level prioritization within pillar teams
Product-led growth mechanics for existing products
Permanent ownership of incubation work beyond defined validation milestones
Validated opportunities transition cleanly into core product teams once approved.
What Success Looks Like
Zipline has a steady pipeline of validated, evidence-backed growth options
Executives have clarity on where to invest next and why
New verticals, offerings, and partnerships launch with conviction—not hope
Core product teams receive de-risked opportunities they can scale confidently.
Growth decisions are faster, clearer, and more disciplined
Compensation:
At Zipline, we're committed to paying our team fairly, transparently, and in a way that supports growth. This role has a minimum annual salary within Canada of $174,333 CAD and a maximum of $261,499 CAD. This role has a minimum annual salary in the USA of $200,000 and a maximum of $300,000 USD.
The broad salary ranges reflect the growth someone will experience in the role—from developing skills to reaching expertise within their career level. We’ve found that hiring team members with the expectation of being accomplished in the role sets them up for success, which for this position on the USA band means a starting salary of $225,000 USD. Within the Canadian band, $196,125 CAD. Salaries below this point typically reflect someone with potential but still building the necessary skills, while salaries above are for individuals already excelling in the role, with a deep understanding of Zipline’s impact on customers, product, and company.
At Zipline, you’ll continue to have career development conversations with your manager to ensure your compensation grows as you advance.
Our salary ranges are determined by market, factoring in our revenue and employee size, paying competitively at the 75th percentile. In higher cost of living markets, we apply 5-10% multipliers on our ranges, depending on the location, to maintain competitive compensation and reflective of the increased expenses our team members face in those areas. While we primarily hire in Canada and the USA, we are a global employer, and all hiring regions will use the same methodology to determine fair and transparent pay.
Transparency is key to building trust in our compensation process. To better understand how this range is determined, we encourage you to ask as many questions as you'd like about compensation during the interview process to ensure clarity and confidence.
What’s in it for you:
Remote-first culture: Join a high performing, fully remote team and work where you're comfortable
Stock Options: Get meaningful ownership in a fast-growing, venture-backed company shaping the future of retail
Time Off: Our flexible time-off policy ensures you stay refreshed and recharged. Plus, you’ll get a monthly stipend to get you out of the house—grab a coffee and work from your favorite spot Benefits: World-class medical, dental, and vision policies
Team Connection: Annual company off-sites in fun locations. We've done New York, Costa Rica, Whistler, Palm Springs, San Diego, and Mexico City
Sabbatical: A one-month paid sabbatical after completing five years of working at Zipline
Volunteering: Every quarter, Zipliners get a paid day off to volunteer for a nonprofit of their choice
Learning: We support continuous learning and provide unlimited access to our Udemy Business account
Great humans, great work: Work with kind, collaborative teammates who care about doing meaningful work and making a real impact. We value diversity of all kinds and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace where we learn from each other. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people of all different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives
Want to learn more about how we work?
We may be remote, but we're anything but disconnected. Zipline is a thriving, dynamic team spread across the globe—collaborating, innovating, and having a blast along the way.
Zipliners work from all over—vans, boats, Airbnbs, and everything in between. No office? No problem. Our culture still feels like one big hug.
Even though we're distributed, we make space to connect—whether it's our weekly all-company social or gathering in person at our yearly retreats. We're building something meaningful together, and we're glad you're considering being a part of it.
We can't wait to meet you!
How We Hire
We use AI tools to support our recruitment process, including helping us organize applications and identify early matches based on role criteria. That said, every rejection decision is made by a human. We encourage candidates to apply authentically and avoid relying solely on AI-generated responses, especially during interviews.
This posting is for a current, open position within Zipline.
This opportunity is offered through HighlightTA, the on-demand talent team supporting Zipline’s growth.
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