Product Director

Fastmarkets is an industry-leading price-reporting agency (PRA) and information provider for global commodities, providing price data, news, analytics and events for the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining and new-generation energy markets.

Fastmarkets' data is critical for customers seeking to understand and predict dynamic, sometimes opaque markets, enabling trading and risk management. Fastmarkets is a global business with a history dating back to 1865 and is built on trust and deep market knowledge. It has more than 700 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland and beyond. 

The Product Director, AI & New Ventures will own Fastmarkets' AI product agenda and be accountable for identifying, validating and scaling AI-enabled products and capabilities that create meaningful customer value and commercial growth.

Reporting to the Chief Product Officer, the role will operate at the intersection of customer needs, product strategy, commercial opportunity and emerging technology. The individual will lead Fastmarkets' AI initiatives from concept through validation and investment recommendation, applying rigorous customer discovery, market analysis, experimentation and commercial assessment to determine which opportunities should be accelerated, refined or stopped.

The role will operate AI initiatives as venture-style propositions, building evidence-based business cases and supporting executive and Board decision-making on future investment priorities. Success will be measured not by the volume of features launched, but by the identification and validation of commercially meaningful opportunities capable of driving growth and strengthening Fastmarkets' competitive position.

Principal Accountabilities

AI Strategy and Portfolio Ownership

• Own and drive Fastmarkets' AI product agenda.
• Develop and maintain the AI product strategy and roadmap aligned to company priorities.
• Identify opportunities to enhance customer value, expand markets and create new revenue streams through AI.
• Recommend prioritisation and investment decisions to the Executive Team and Board.

Customer Discovery and Opportunity Validation

• Lead structured customer discovery programmes to identify and validate unmet customer needs.
• Translate customer insights into testable opportunities and commercial propositions.
• Run rapid experimentation cycles to assess viability, desirability and feasibility.
• Establish clear evidence thresholds for scaling, pivoting or stopping initiatives.

Commercial Assessment and Business Case Development

• Conduct market assessment, including TAM, SAM and growth opportunity analysis.
• Evaluate competitor positioning, market dynamics and commercial attractiveness.
• Develop business cases covering revenue potential, investment requirements, operating costs and return expectations.
• Build executive-level recommendations to support investment decisions.

Product Incubation and Venture Leadership

• Operate AI initiatives as internal start-ups with clearly defined objectives and success metrics.
• Develop pricing, packaging and commercial models.
• Drive early-stage proposition development and market testing.
• Recommend the most appropriate path forward for each initiative, including scale, partner, acquire or stop.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Work closely with Product, Technology, Commercial, Content and Marketing teams.
• Influence product architecture and delivery decisions without owning technology delivery.
• Align stakeholders around priorities, investment decisions and execution plans.
• Represent the AI portfolio with senior leadership, Board members and external stakeholders where required.

We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world’s leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.

If you are open-minded, curious, resilient, solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality, then read on.

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.

Experience

• Seasoned product leadership, strategy, corporate innovation, venture building, consulting or related commercial roles.
• Proven experience launching, validating or scaling new products, businesses or growth initiatives.
• Experience developing commercial business cases and investment proposals for senior executives or Boards.
• Experience assessing market opportunities through customer research, competitive analysis and market sizing exercises.
• Experience working with AI, data, analytics or technology-enabled products preferred.
• Experience within subscription, information services, SaaS, data or technology businesses preferred.

Skills

• Strong commercial judgement and strategic thinking.
• Ability to rapidly generate, assess and prioritise growth opportunities.
• Deep understanding of product commercialisation, pricing and value capture.
• Strong analytical capability, including TAM/SAM assessment, business case development and investment evaluation.
• Excellent executive communication skills.
• Ability to make evidence-based decisions in situations with imperfect information.
• Highly entrepreneurial mindset with strong accountability for outcomes.

If you're excited about the role but your experience, skills or qualifications don't perfectly align, we encourage you to apply anyway.

Our Values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It’s this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common – and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do. Our values are:

• METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers’ experience and our business performance
   
• ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
   
• GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
   
• INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
   
• CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
   
• COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.

We are committed to ensuring all candidates feel welcomed and supported. Should your application advance and you require accommodations for the interview process, please inform us so we can make the necessary arrangements.

Reward and benefits at Fastmarkets

We believe in fair pay and benefits that support you both inside and outside of work. Through Fastmarkets Rewards, you'll have access to a range of core benefits and a flexible allowance, giving you the freedom to tailor your package to suit your lifestyle, wellbeing and financial priorities. We know that everyone's needs are different, so we've designed our benefits to support our diverse global team wherever they're based.

Specific benefits may vary by country and role.

You’ve read a little about us – now it’s over to you!

If you like what you’ve read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person, it’s time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: it’s used to determine whether or not you’ll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions we’ll ask you on the day.

It’s vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why you’re great.