Role Overview
Oxford Nanopore Technologies is seeking a Senior Director of Product Management to lead the strategy, lifecycle management, and commercial success of our sequencing systems portfolio. This role is accountable for both on-market sequencing platforms and new product introductions, ensuring products deliver clear customer value, align with company strategy, and are successfully developed, launched, and sustained at scale.
The role sits at the intersection of technology, science, and commercial execution, working closely with R&D, Product Development, Commercial, Marketing, Operations, and Regulatory teams. The successful candidate will bring strong leadership, strategic thinking, and deep experience managing complex, hardware-enabled product portfolios in a fast-moving, innovation-driven environment.
Key Responsibilities
Product Strategy & Portfolio Leadership
- Define and own the product strategy and roadmap for sequencing systems across their full lifecycle, from concept through launch, growth, and end-of-life.
- Balance investment across on-market products and future platforms, ensuring alignment with Oxford Nanopore’s scientific, commercial, and strategic objectives.
- Lead portfolio prioritisation and trade-off decisions, informed by customer insight, market opportunity, technical feasibility, and operational readiness.
On-Market Product Leadership
- Lead and team and provide senior product leadership for existing sequencing systems, ensuring continued customer value, competitiveness, and commercial performance.
- Drive lifecycle management activities including roadmap evolution, upgrades, cost optimisation, performance improvements, and end-of-life planning.
- Partner with Commercial, Customer Support, and Marketing teams to address market feedback, adoption barriers, and competitive dynamics.
New Product Introductions
- Lead a product management team for new sequencing system development, from early concept and requirements definition through development, launch, and scale-up.
- Translate customer and market needs into clear product requirements, value propositions, and success criteria.
- Ensure strong cross-functional alignment throughout the product development and commercialisation process.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Act as a senior leader and connector across R&D, Engineering, Product Development, Regulatory, Quality, Operations, and Commercial teams.
- Provide clear product direction and decision-making in complex, technically ambiguous environments.
- Represent the voice of the customer and the market at senior governance forums.
Team Leadership & Capability Building
- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing product management team, setting clear expectations and fostering strong product leadership capability.
- Establish best practices for product management, including customer insight, roadmap governance, and lifecycle management.
- Mentor and develop senior product leaders and successors within the organisation.
Required Experience & Skills
- Significant senior leadership experience in product management for complex technical products, ideally combining hardware, software, and consumables.
- Strong understanding of end-to-end product development and commercialisation processes.
- Strong understanding of the sequencing market and competitor products.
- Experience working closely with R&D and engineering teams on technical platforms.
- Demonstrated ability to influence and lead at executive level, with strong stakeholder management and decision-making skills.
- Commercially astute, with experience shaping value propositions, pricing strategies, and go-to-market plans.
- Comfortable operating in fast-paced, evolving organisations with scientific and technical complexity.
- Background in life sciences, genomics, sequencing, diagnostics, or adjacent technology sectors.
Desirable Experience
- Experience working in platform or systems-based product portfolios.
- Exposure to global markets and diverse customer segments, including research, clinical, and applied markets.
Why Oxford Nanopore
Oxford Nanopore Technologies is redefining what’s possible in sequencing, enabling real-time, accessible analysis of DNA and RNA. This role offers the opportunity to shape the future of sequencing systems at scale, working with world-class scientists, engineers, and commercial teams to deliver products that have global scientific and societal impact.
About Us
Oxford Nanopore Technologies: Our goal is to bring the widest benefits to society through enabling the analysis of anything, by anyone, anywhere. The company has developed a new generation of nanopore-based sensing technology for faster, information rich, accessible and affordable molecular analysis. The first application is DNA/RNA sequencing, and the technology is in development for the analysis of other types of molecules including proteins. The technology is used to understand and characterise the biology of humans and diseases such as cancer, plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, and whole environments. With a thriving culture of ambition and strong innovation goals, Oxford Nanopore is a UK headquartered company with global operations and customers in more than 125 countries.
Skills Required
- Significant senior leadership experience in product management for complex technical products
- Understanding of end-to-end product development and commercialisation processes
- Understanding of the sequencing market and competitor products
- Experience working closely with R&D and engineering teams
- Ability to influence and lead at executive level
- Commercially astute with experience in value propositions and pricing
- Background in life sciences, genomics, sequencing, or diagnostics
Oxford Nanopore Technologies Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Oxford Nanopore Technologies and has not been reviewed or approved by Oxford Nanopore Technologies.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered good to above average across many roles, with employer-provided ranges visible for several U.S. commercial and applications positions and company materials emphasizing market‑competitive base pay. Commercial and some senior technical posts, particularly in the U.S., are positioned as competitive and often paired with strong variable components.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — All‑employee share plans in the UK and a U.S. employee stock purchase plan indicate broad access to equity as part of total reward. Company communications highlight attractive bonus and share plans that add meaningful upside beyond base pay.
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Healthcare Strength — U.S. roles indicate strong health insurance and core protections, while official materials and country overviews reference private medical coverage and wellbeing support. These elements position the health package as a notable strength alongside cash compensation.
Oxford Nanopore Technologies Insights
What We Do
Our goal is to enable the analysis of anything, anywhere, by anyone. We have developed the world’s first and only nanopore DNA and RNA sequencing platform. It’s a new generation of sequencing technology — the only one to offer: scalability to portable or ultra-high throughput formats, real-time data delivery, and the ability to elucidate rich biological data. We are aiming to disrupt the way that biological analyses are currently performed, and open up new applications that have a profound, positive impact on society. Our devices offer real-time analysis, for rapid insights, in fully scalable formats — from pocket to population scale — and the technology is being used in more than 100 countries worldwide. Founded in 2005 as a spin-out from the University of Oxford, the company now employs more than 600 people from multiple disciplines including nanopore science, molecular biology and applications, informatics, engineering, electronics, manufacturing and commercialisation. The management team, led by CEO Dr Gordon Sanghera, has a track record of delivering disruptive technologies to the market.
