Lead Product Owner – Creative Capabilities, WPP Open

About WPP Open: 

WPP Open is at the forefront of transforming how WPP delivers value to its clients. We are building a unified product ecosystem that empowers our agencies and clients with cutting-edge tools and data-driven insights. Our product organisation is driven by a clear vision, strategic execution, and a commitment to continuous innovation.

The Opportunity: 

The Lead Product Owner for Creative Capabilities in WPP Open is responsible for shaping and delivering marketing tools for the Creative team in WPP.  This role oversees the full product life-cycle—from discovery through delivery—ensuring solutions are grounded in real user needs and measurable business outcomes.

You’ll bring understanding of marketing processes and agency creative workflows, with hands-on experience partnering with creative teams. You’ll have (and continue to analyse) clear insights into the competitive landscape of marketing agencies and be able to assess and deliver new features and ways of working with our creative teams. A key part of the role is leading product discovery: clarifying problems, mapping journeys, running workshops/interviews, validating concepts, and turning insights into prioritised product requirements.

In parallel, you’ll drive product excellence in delivery—aligning stakeholders, managing the backlog, defining acceptance criteria, and working closely with design and engineering to deliver high-quality, scalable capabilities within WPP Open.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Delivery Planning & Cross-Capability Direction:

• Own the translation of strategic vision for a group of capabilities, defining the end-state, direction, and an overarching plan of work across other product areas with a +6-month horizon.
• Lead high-level product discovery to deeply understand strategic user needs, market opportunities, and technical feasibility relevant to your group of capabilities, informing the strategic delivery plan.
• Develop and maintain the strategic delivery plans and high-level roadmaps for your group of capabilities, outlining the prioritised sequence of feature development, enhancements, and initiatives for execution by the pods.
• Provide strategic direction and guidance to Senior and Product Owners, ensuring their detailed planning and execution align with the +6-month horizon and overall delivery strategy.

 

Comprehensive Product Delivery Planning & Alignment:

• Translate overarching strategic vision into comprehensive, actionable delivery strategies and high-level plans for your group of capabilities, ensuring seamless alignment with the broader product strategy.
• Collaborate closely with engineering leads and Product Design to ensure technical feasibility, optimal implementation, and user-centric design are integrated into overall strategic delivery plans.
• Facilitate cross-team prioritisation and dependency management across multiple development teams and product areas, working to resolve conflicts and ensure smooth flow of value.

 

Stakeholder Management & Communication:

• Proactively engage with a diverse range of senior stakeholders, including the business SMEs, product leads, design leads, delivery leads, engineering leads, and key senior stakeholders, to gather feedback, clarify strategic intent, and build consensus for complex product initiatives.
• Communicate overall product progress, strategic plans, and insights to senior stakeholders, ensuring clarity in complex discussions and articulating the measurable impact of delivered capabilities.
• Influence prioritisation decisions at a cross-team level, advocating for the most impactful work and managing expectations effectively.

 

Performance Measurement & Value Realisation:

• Define and track relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your group of capabilities, measuring both delivery efficiency and the realisation of intended value from executed features.
• Ensure product outcomes directly contribute to the business KPIs established by key senior stakeholders, demonstrating a clear understanding of the value being created through execution.
• Drive continuous iteration and improvement across your group of capabilities, leveraging user feedback, data insights, and market performance to optimise execution and value delivery.

 

What you'll need:

• Progressive experience in product ownership, with demonstrable leadership in strategic delivery planning.
• Proven ability to translate strategic vision into comprehensive, actionable delivery plans and roadmaps for a group of capabilities.
• Extensive experience in leading high-level product discovery, defining end-state and direction, and providing strategic guidance to other Product Owners.
• Deep expertise in Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) at scale, including practices that support rapid, iterative delivery and post-launch optimisation.
• Proven ability to lead, influence, and align multiple cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders towards efficient and outcome-driven delivery.
• An analytical mindset, with the ability to leverage data and user insights to drive process improvements, measure delivery performance, and inform continuous product iteration.
• Demonstrable experience in developing comprehensive rollout strategies, managing product launches, and ensuring operational readiness.