Hire a chief product officer · how to hire a CPO · CPO, VP of product or product director
Hire a chief product officer · decide the seat, then the route
To hire a chief product officer, first decide whether you need an executive who owns product strategy, pricing and the roadmap at board level, or a VP of product or product director who runs the teams against a strategy set by someone else.
Then choose the route (fractional, interim or permanent) and the package, and only then start the search.
We recruit fractional, interim, part-time, temporary and permanent executives, and non-executive directors.
On every brief we send a shortlist of 3–5, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, after five-stage vetting.
How a brief runswhat we undertake
- 01Brief30-MINUTE SCOPING CALLDay 0
- 02Shortlist of 3–5VETTED · RATE BENCHMARK · IR35After the brief
- 03InterviewsYOU MEET THE SHORTLISTYour diary
- 04Scoped startFIRST-MONTH OUTCOMES AGREEDYou set the date
- 05Fractional, interim and permanentIR35 POSITION SET OUTOn every brief
Shortlist3–5
In the press
Fast Company 16 leaders on when fractional C-suite hires make sense · 24 Jun 2026
Useful before you choose between a permanent CPO and a part-week one. Leaders here set out when a fractional executive suits a defined mandate and when the seat needs someone in it every day.
15 minutes · video or phone
Book 15 minutes to hire a chief product officer
Tell us the scope and the days a week. We come back with Chief Product Officer candidates, their day rates and availability.
- 0115 minutes, video or phone
- 02We scope the role and the days a week
- 03A shortlist of 3–5 after the call
- 04Fractional, interim and permanent briefs
Pick a day that suits · live availability
On the board · last 3 months
CPO jobs on the board
Live CPO and product leadership roles
How fractional recruitment agencies compare is set out in one place, including how we work: a Chief Product Officer brief and a shortlist of three to five.
01/ the role
Do you need a chief product officer, or a different seat?
A CPO owns what the company builds and why: the product vision, the strategy, pricing and the roadmap.
SFIA’s product management skill lists the same work, from defining vision, strategy and roadmaps to setting pricing strategy.
The test is whether those decisions need an owner at the top table.
If the founder or CEO still owns the roadmap and has become the bottleneck, or the board asks product questions nobody can answer, the seat is probably a CPO.
If the strategy is already clear and the gap is running the teams, you probably need a VP of product or a product director instead.
The section on which hire, below, sets out the difference.
Fractional, interim or permanent
Permanent suits a company with several product teams and a long roadmap that needs an owner every day.
An interim CPO covers the seat full-time for a fixed term, after a departure or through a re-platform.
A fractional CPO gives senior product judgement for agreed days a week; to go that way, hire a fractional CPO.
Hyperact put a fractional or contract CPO at £800–£1,500 a day in 2024.
Duties that come with the seat
If the CPO joins the board, the seven general duties of a company director come with it.
Companies House notes they also apply to someone who acts as a director without being formally appointed.
02/ scope
How to hire a chief product officer
A search for “hire chief product officer” usually starts with a job advert, but the advert is the fourth decision, not the first.
Work through these in order.
1. Name the product problem
Write down what should be different in a year: a new market entered, pricing reset, several teams pulling one way.
That sentence decides the seat, the route and the person.
Turn it into a CPO job description before anyone is approached, with what the CPO owns and what stays with the CEO and the CTO.
2. Choose the seat and the route
Decide between a CPO, a VP of product and a product director, then between fractional, interim and permanent.
A part-week or fixed-term hire can also cover the seat while a permanent search runs.
3. Set the package
No source we can verify publishes a UK CPO salary.
One level down, Robert Half’s 2026 figures put a head of product at £77,000–£113,250 nationally (median £97,750) and £104,750–£154,000 in London (median £133,000).
Robert Half is a recruiter, and these are its published figures.
See head of product salary for more.
4. Run the search to a date
Set the date the CPO must start and work back from it, allowing for their notice period.
The full process, from the brief to references, is set out under chief product officer recruitment.
Plan the first months as well.
Acas notes there is no legal requirement to have a probation period, and that probation should be tailored to the job.
What we do on a CPO brief
We send a shortlist of 3–5, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.
Every candidate goes through our five-stage vetting first.
03/ comparison
CPO, VP of product or product director?
Three seats that are often confused. Choose by what the person will own, not by the title.
04/ vetting
How we vet chief product officers
What we undertake on every brief, before a candidate reaches you.
- 01
Qualification screen
Verify Chief Product Officer tenure, sector context and stage fit.
SOURCING - 02
Mandate fit
Match to your situation — stage, board dynamics, timing.
MATCHING - 03
Reference deep-dive
We take references ourselves, from recent past clients — real outcomes, not titles.
VERIFY - 04
Shortlist
Three to five candidates with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.
SHORTLIST OF 3–5
05/ hire a CPO for a SaaS company
Hire a CPO for a SaaS company: what changes
To hire a CPO for a SaaS company, test the candidate on the levers a subscription business lives by: pricing and packaging, activation and retention.
Ask for a pricing or packaging change they made, and what happened to customers who were already paying.
A SaaS CPO also signs off products that hold customer data.
The ICO’s guidance on data protection by design says data protection must be built in from the design stage and throughout the lifecycle, so ask how they did that in discovery.
Software security is now a product question too.
The government’s Software Security Code of Practice sets out what software vendors are expected to do, and a SaaS CPO should know where their product stands against it.
On pay, many SaaS packages include share options.
Under Enterprise Management Incentives, a qualifying company can grant options worth up to £250,000 in a three-year period, to an employee who works at least 25 hours a week or 75% of their working time for it.
A fractional CPO working through their own company does not qualify for EMI.
Plan their incentive another way.
06/ cpo, vp of product or product director
CPO, VP of product or product director: which hire
Choose a CPO when product strategy is a board-level question that nobody owns.
Choose a VP of product when the strategy is set and you need someone to run the product organisation at scale.
Choose a product director or head of product when you have a few teams and need one leader to run them.
Searches for “hire vp product management” and “hire product director” usually describe one of these two seats below a CPO.
Titles vary between companies, so compare scope rather than title.
The government’s Digital and Data capability framework runs its product ladder from associate product manager to head of product, and defines the job as balancing user and business needs.
On pay, Exec Capital’s director salary guide puts a mid-market Director of Product at £100,000–£280,000 base; Exec Capital is a recruiter, and these are its published figures.
For the seat one level down, see head of product jobs and fractional head of product jobs.
Professional standing is one signal among several.
BCS offers a Practitioner Certificate in Digital Product Management, which is useful for a product director and rarely decisive for a CPO.
07/ questions
Hire a chief product officer FAQ
The questions people ask before bringing in a chief product officer.
Book 15 minutes · shortlist of 3–5
Bring the brief. We architect the team.
A shortlist of 3–5 with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, after five-stage vetting.
