SVP, Product
About Toptal
Toptal is a global network of top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $200+ million in annual revenue and team members based around the globe, Toptal is the world’s largest fully remote workforce.
We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.
Position Description:
As SVP, Product, you will shape the vision as to where Toptal’s products and platforms go next and then drive the execution to build them. This is the most senior product role in the company. You will report to the Chief Executive Officer, sit on the executive team, and work collaboratively with our Engineering, Design, Finance, Marketing, New Businesses, Professional Services, and Customer leaders. AI is not a line item on your roadmap. It is the roadmap.
You should be Toptal’s foremost expert on what AI means for products and platforms. That means real depth in fine-tuning and post-training, agent design and evaluation, and the economics of running models in production, along with the judgment to know which applies to us. Work directly with our AI researchers rather than through them. We expect both the AI agenda and the product strategy to originate with you. We will react to your plan rather than hand you ours.
This is a hands-on role. You will write your own specs and pull your own data. When you think an agent could take over a piece of work, you will build a rough version and find out whether it holds up before anyone budgets for it. You will sit in product reviews and say what you actually think. We move fast, and we need Product setting the pace. You will own and set the standards for the hiring bar for the product team, bringing in talent that will advance Toptal to the next level.
Your remit runs across the business: the core platform, the talent and client experiences, the internal systems that run it, the products we take to market, and the data and AI platform underneath them. You will work hand in hand with Engineering on the platform all of it runs on, fold acquisitions and new products into the portfolio, and know growth marketing cold, because how a product reaches the market is part of building it.
Product is yours to shape at blazing speed: scoping, sizing the teams, planning headcount, and defining the role and the bar for every seat. None of that is beneath the role, and we are not interested in someone who thinks these tasks can be done properly by handing them off to HR. Hiring is the highest-leverage work you do, and we want someone who is visibly excited about landing an A player and treats an open seat as urgent. Your own dedication and hard work will set the tone, and the people you bring in should be inspired to do the best work of their careers on this team. We are looking for the person who will define what an AI-native product organization looks like and then run it successfully.
This is a remote position. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English.
Responsibilities:
The following information is intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, or required skills.
AI and agentic product
- Own Toptal’s AI product strategy: where agents and models belong across the marketplace, the talent and client experiences, our internal systems, and the products we take to market, along with the business outcomes they carry.
- Decide what we build with AI and what we do not, including build-versus-buy on models and tooling and the packaging and pricing of AI-enabled products.
- Make AI quality measurable through evals, acceptance bars, and review loops, and partner with Engineering on the platform as its most demanding customer.
- Rebuild how Product works using AI, raising the output and judgment of every product manager through AI-assisted discovery, research, prototyping, and analysis. Product managers have to want this rather than comply with it, and creating that pull is on you.
Portfolio and operating model
- Own the vision, strategy, and multi-year roadmap for the whole portfolio: what we build, what we sunset, and how investment is distributed across growth, platform, and operational leverage.
- Establish the product operating model and the metrics behind it, so decisions are made on evidence and user research rather than opinion.
- Own the product integration of acquisitions and new products, and act as a senior voice of the customer for both talent and clients.
Team and accountability
- Decide what a product team should look like now that the roles have blurred, where the product manager believes they can design and code, the engineer believes they can do product and design, and the designer believes they can code and do product.
- Own resourcing and workforce planning, and hit time-sensitive hiring commitments.
- Review the product work directly, develop people against a clear bar, and raise it as the organization grows.
In the first week, expect to:
- Work to get up to speed with how the organization runs, including how our operational frameworks work.
- Begin building relationships with the CEO, the executive team, and your direct reports.
- Begin learning Toptal’s platform architecture, marketplace dynamics, internal tooling, and current AI initiatives and capabilities.
In the first month, expect to:
- Assess the current state of the Product organization and its AI maturity: its people, its roadmap, its rituals, and where the gaps are, including the team against the bar this role requires.
- Bring the executive team a product strategy no one asked you for.
- Become acquainted with the full product portfolio, the company’s goals, and those you will partner with.
- Establish a shared view with the CEO and the executive team of the company’s priorities and how product supports them.
- Start collaborating closely with your product teams.
In the first three months, expect to:
- Own the product portfolio, its strategy, and its roadmap, and be executing your own plan with at least one AI-enabled capability already in production and measured.
- Present your resourcing plan and a clear point of view to the executive team on where product investment should concentrate, what should be deprioritized, and why.
- Establish or refine the product operating model: planning cadence, prioritization framework, and the metrics the organization will be held to, with the trust of the peers and teams you work with most closely.
In the first six months, expect to:
- Show business impact from AI-enabled products in at least two core surfaces, with the evidence behind it, and visible progress against the top portfolio priorities measured against the metrics you defined.
- Have the right leadership team in place, with a clear plan to close any remaining gaps.
- Be inspiring and mentoring the teams you work with, upleveling how the organization brainstorms, collaborates, and executes, and charting a clear path for scaling Product’s impact.
In the first year, expect to:
- Run a product organization recognized inside and outside Toptal as one of the most advanced in the industry, with AI leverage embedded in the portfolio and the operating model rather than living in a set of pilots.
- Have built an exceptional product team doing the best work of their careers, with a record of building impactful products in a timely and elegant fashion.
- Deliver on your roadmap priorities and promises, with a demonstrable link between product investment and business results, and Product established as a trusted, high-leverage function that the rest of the company plans around.
Qualifications and Job Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree is required, preferably in a technical discipline (Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems). Masters is strongly preferred.
- At least 15 years of proven software Product Management experience.
- At least 8 years of experience leading Product organizations, including experience leading other product leaders (managing managers).
- Proven ability to raise the level of a product organization through the people you hire and develop.
- Proven ownership of resourcing and workforce planning, with a hiring track record you can quantify. You have made the hard calls when someone was not clearing the bar.
- Experience owning an entire product portfolio at a high-growth technology company, with accountability for business outcomes and not solely delivery.
- Demonstrated success setting product strategy at the executive level and translating it into an executable roadmap across multiple teams and domains.
- Experience leading AI-enabled products, with a focus on delivering measurable business outcomes.
- Deep, hands-on command of modern AI as a product discipline: agentic architectures, harness and orchestration design, retrieval, context engineering, fine-tuning, and evaluation, along with the economics of running models in production. You have shipped these yourself.
- Further ahead on AI than the executives around you, able to teach it, and proven at moving an organization to adopt something it was not asking for.
- Growth marketing fluency. You understand acquisition, activation, conversion, and retention well enough to build for them.
- Experience with marketplace, platform, or two-sided business models is a strong plus.
- Prior experience working as a Software Engineer is a strong plus.
- Comfortable working with SQL or spreadsheets to analyze data, as well as conducting research with internal and external users.
- Ability to creatively craft solutions through data and a user-centric approach.
- Be meticulous and have a high bar for quality when writing user stories, brainstorming technical approaches, and testing a feature before it is released.
- Be humble, willing to learn, and do whatever is needed to help us accomplish our goals.
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills.
- Experience using agile development methodologies with globally distributed teams and the ability to keep up with a fast-paced and global company.
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, rapidly growing company and handle a wide variety of challenges, deadlines, and a diverse array of contacts.
- You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal, and you will not be here just to tell other people what to do.
