Head of Product

Company Overview

RocketDNA is an ASX-listed, leading innovator in the drone and automation industry, specialising in enterprise drone services across a variety of sectors. Our mission is to revolutionise these industries through the application of autonomous drone technology, providing efficient, cost-effective and safe solutions to our clients worldwide. We are seeking a Head of Product & Technology to steer the product strategy and technical execution for this portfolio.

About the Role

This role combines product leadership and hands‑on technology stewardship. You will own the product vision and roadmap for SiteTube, SkyLink and IoT Radar, while also defining the architectural direction for their underlying platforms. It will suit someone who can set a clear strategy and then build and lead a distributed engineering team to deliver it.

The successful candidate will work closely with customers and internal stakeholders, translate requirements into actionable sprints, and ensure the systems we build are secure, reliable and scalable.

RocketDNA is open to a part-time or fractional working arrangement for the ideal candidate.

Key Duties include

• Define and communicate product vision and strategy: Conduct market and user research, assess competitor offerings and identify opportunities; use these insights to craft a compelling product vision and strategy that align with RocketDNA's goals and resonate with enterprise customers.
• Develop and maintain the product roadmap: Translate the vision into an actionable roadmap, prioritising features based on market needs and user feedback. Balance quick wins with long‑term technical investments and ensure that SiteTube, SkyLink and IoT Radar develop in a cohesive way.
• Lead and grow a globally distributed engineering team: Hire, mentor and inspire a high‑performing team of developers and DevOps engineers. Promote a collaborative culture, encourage continuous learning and foster accountability. Structure teams into autonomous squads using Agile or similar frameworks to maintain velocity and innovation.
• Build and own technical architecture: Define and own the long‑term technology vision and architecture roadmap. Select appropriate technology stacks and make decisions that affect cost, scalability and maintainability. Hands‑on contributions are expected – you will review code, implement key components and maintain a high bar for code quality.
• Establish DevOps and cloud best practices: Design and automate CI/CD pipelines, version control processes and environment management to support multiple concurrent development efforts. Oversee infrastructure on AWS, including provisioning, configuration, monitoring and cost optimisation. Implement secure development, testing and production environments with logging and traceability.
• Ensure cybersecurity, compliance and enterprise readiness: Implement and enforce security protocols and compliance frameworks consistent with enterprise customer requirements (e.g. SSO, data privacy, encryption). Monitor evolving security threats and update policies accordingly.
• Drive cross‑functional collaboration: Partner with design, hardware, operations and commercial teams to ensure that engineering efforts are aligned with product and business objectives. Foster transparency and effective communication across the organisation, including regular updates to senior leadership and stakeholders.
• Engage directly with customers and end‑users: Collect requirements, run user interviews, observe field operations and translate feedback into product enhancements. Ensure that our software solves real‑world problems in mining and industrial settings and that improvements are clearly communicated to customers.
• Manage budgets and identify revenue opportunities: Manage the technology budget, including cloud spend and development costs, and evaluate build‑versus‑buy decisions. Look for ways to monetise product features (e.g., premium analytics modules) and propose pricing models.
• Champion data‑driven decision‑making: Establish key metrics to measure product performance, user engagement and system health. Use analytics to guide priorities and to understand the impact of new features.

What we're looking for

• Blend of product and technical leadership: Demonstrated success defining product strategy and driving execution of a multi‑product portfolio. Ability to articulate a vision and inspire teams.
• Deep technical expertise: 10+ years in software engineering with hands‑on experience in cloud‑native architectures, AWS, DevOps and microservices. Experience building GIS, data‑visualisation or IoT platforms is advantageous.
• Agile project management: Strong knowledge of Agile methodologies, backlog management and sprint planning. Proven ability to coordinate cross‑functional teams and deliver iterative improvements while managing scope and timeline.
• Security and compliance: Familiarity with enterprise security practices, authentication/RBAC/SSO frameworks and regulatory compliance. Experience managing DevOps pipelines and infrastructure in regulated environments.
• Strong communicator and collaborator: Excellent communication skills for engaging engineers, designers, executives and enterprise customers. Ability to translate technical concepts into business outcomes and vice versa.
• Strategic and entrepreneurial mindset: Comfortable making decisions with imperfect information, balancing innovation with practical considerations. Demonstrates financial acumen and a focus on delivering customer value.
• Global, remote‑team leadership: Experience hiring and managing distributed teams across time zones. Skilled at creating cohesion, setting clear expectations and maintaining accountability in a remote environment.
• Work authorisation: Must have current Australian work authorisation at the time of application.

Getting hands on is part of the remit. Beyond setting direction and managing the delivery of product roadmaps, this person will jump into the code when needed – writing modules, debugging tricky issues and making architectural improvements. In early-stage products or critical features, you might act as the lead developer, demonstrating best practices and setting the quality bar for the rest of the team.

You'll also take responsibility for the integrity of the codebase. That includes designing automated tests and review processes, performing code reviews and working with engineers to improve technical standards.

In a lean organisation the Head of Product & Technology often fills gaps in DevOps and quality assurance until additional specialists can be hired, so you should be comfortable configuring environments, monitoring deployments and ensuring security and reliability.