Head of Product Governance & Innovation

GAF Geospatial GmbH (GAF), an e-GEOS S.p.A. (Telespazio S.p.A./ASI) company, is a globally active provider of cross-platform geoinformation solutions and innovative Earth Observation applications. In addition to receiving and procuring satellite-based earth observation data, GAF holds a leading position in the areas of data processing and geo-consulting due to its 40 years of expertise. With an international and interdisciplinary team of experts, GAF sets standards for geospatial consulting, cloud- and AI-based data analysis, and satellite-based monitoring of the environment and natural resources in Europe and around the globe.

To strengthen our technology organisation at our headquarters in Munich, we are looking for an experienced and business-oriented

Head of Product Governance & Innovation

Reporting to the CTO, you will lead product strategy, roadmap development, and product governance for our geospatial solutions portfolio. You will translate market and customer needs into structured product priorities, improve portfolio transparency and decision-making, and strengthen the link between engineering, business development, and customer value.

Your responsibilities:

Product strategy and portfolio direction

  • Together with your team you define a clear product vision and measurable product goals aligned with company strategy
  • Develop and maintain a 12 to 24-month product roadmap and associated implementation priorities in close cooperation with engineering teams
  • Build pragmatic business cases, including market need, pricing logic, investment rationale, and expected business impact
  • Align product priorities with strategic objectives, available capacity, and release planning
  • Support product-related investment and prioritisation decisions with clear recommendations

Product governance and lifecycle management

  • Establish and further develop product governance routines, roadmap review processes, and prioritisation frameworks across the portfolio
  • Drive product lifecycle management from ideation and validation through development, launch, improvement, and retirement
  • Ensure transparency on product priorities, dependencies, trade-offs, and roadmap status
  • Balance customer-specific requirements with scalability, reuse, and portfolio coherence
  • Strengthen decision-making across product, engineering, and business stakeholders

Customer and market understanding

  • Identify target groups, key use cases, pain points, and market potential for each product line
  • Monitor market developments, competing products, and relevant partnerships
  • Translate customer and market insight into clear product implications and roadmap inputs
  • Engage with customers and stakeholders to validate needs and improve product-market fit
  • Present products and solutions in relevant customer and market contexts, including selected conferences and trade fairs

Go-to-market and commercial enablement

  • Support Business Development and Sales with clear product value propositions, demonstrations, and solution positioning
  • Provide product input to quotations, proposals, and tenders, including scope, deliverables, assumptions, risks, and pricing guardrails
  • Assess opportunities together with Sales / BD with a balanced view of product fit, benefits, risks, and resource implications
  • Ensure that commercial commitments are aligned with roadmap priorities and delivery realities
  • Contribute to a clear and differentiated positioning of the product portfolio in the market

Execution and cross-functional alignment

  • Translate market and business needs into concise requirements, problem statements, and prioritised backlog inputs
  • Coordinate closely with engineering teams on planning, release readiness, and implementation sequencing
  • Ensure quality, documentation, and handover requirements are addressed appropriately
  • Provide clear, timely, and decision-relevant updates on progress, risks, dependencies, and next steps
  • Act as a central interface between product, engineering, business development, and other stakeholders

Portfolio synergy and scalability

  • Identify synergies across products, customers, and solution areas to improve speed, reuse, and scalability
  • Collect, analyse, and prioritise customer requests in a structured and transparent manner
  • Explain and align trade-offs across stakeholders where competing priorities exist
  • Help reduce unnecessary fragmentation and support a more standardised, scalable product model
  • Align product priorities with capacity planning to support realistic and successful execution

Your profile:

  • University degree in Business Administration, Computer Science, Geoinformatics, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field
  • Several years of relevant professional experience in product management or a closely related role for B2B software, analytics, data, or geospatial solutions
  • Proven experience in product strategy, roadmap management, and cross-functional prioritisation
  • Strong understanding of software development, data analytics, and geospatial solution environments, with the ability to engage credibly with technical teams
  • Good commercial understanding, including market analysis, business models, pricing logic, and business case development
  • Experience supporting customer presentations, bids, proposals, or go-to-market activities for software or data-driven solutions
  • Familiarity with software delivery methods and tools used in product and engineering environments
  • Experience in an international, interdisciplinary, and technically demanding environment
  • Very good written and spoken German and English; further languages are an advantage

Personal strengths

  • Strong strategic and analytical thinking
  • Structured, reliable, and able to bring clarity to complex topics
  • Strong communication and presentation skills with both internal and external stakeholders
  • Commercially aware and able to connect market needs with technology and business priorities
  • Collaborative and effective in interdisciplinary environments
  • Pragmatic, solution-oriented, and confident in managing trade-offs
  • Able to combine product vision with execution discipline

Desirable background:

  • Experience with web and mobile product environments
  • Exposure to remote sensing, satellite imagery products, or geospatial standards
  • Understanding of EU and German public-sector procurement or tendering environments
  • Experience in balancing customer-specific needs with scalable product development
  • Familiarity with product performance tracking, roadmap governance, or portfolio steering

What we offer:

  • A visible and strategically relevant role reporting directly to the CTO
  • The opportunity to shape product strategy, governance, and portfolio direction in a growing technology environment
  • An international and interdisciplinary working environment with dedicated colleagues
  • Training and development opportunities because your experience and knowledge count
  • A respectful, friendly, and modern project-based working environment with a leadership style based on trust
  • Flexible working hours and the opportunity to work from home within the framework of our regulations
  • Workation: temporary work from abroad depending on individual and legal requirements
  • An attractive Munich location with excellent public transport connections and strong outdoor and leisure options nearby
  • A range of additional benefits, e.g., public transport contribution (job ticket), company pension scheme (optional), travel health insurance (worldwide), occupational health management and more

Further information:

  • Place of work: Headquarters in Munich
  • Full-time position (40 hours per week)
  • Permanent position, available to start as soon as possible

Send your application

Then we look forward to receiving your application. Please send your application and any other useful supporting documents, along with your (gross) salary expectations and your earliest possible availability to start, to recruiting@gaf.de.
Please state “Head of Product Governance & Innovation” as the subject.

Step 1 of 5

Contact:

Recruiting-Team
recruiting@gaf.de
phone: +49 89 12 15 28 0
Arnulfstr. 199 • 80634 Munich• https://www.gaf.de

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