Group Product Manager - Hawthorn East

JobsCloseBy Editorial Insights

Coles Group is seeking a Group Product Manager in Hawthorn East to shape a complex product portfolio spanning supermarkets, commercial and liquor platforms. You will lead a team of Product Managers, set strategy, govern discovery, and partner with stakeholders to translate technical options into business outcomes. The role requires proven strategic product leadership in matrixed environments, strong stakeholder influence, data driven decisions, and solid understanding of agile lifecycle practices. In your application highlight portfolio leadership, cross functional impact, defined success metrics, and examples of delivering customer value while managing risk and compliance. Show how you balance enterprise and product needs, communicate a clear vision, and drive alignment across teams. Coles offers flexible working and development opportunities.

We’ve been proudly serving Australian communities since 1914 and have grown to become a top 30-listed company on the ASX with a portfolio of iconic homegrown brands. At the heart of our continued success is over 115,000 team members working across the country, all contributing to bringing our customers smiles. You’ll not only get to see your work make a difference, you’ll be part of a team working together to help Australians eat and live better every day.

About the team

Our Technology team is the backbone of the business, building and maintaining the information technology infrastructure that support Coles Group. As a part of the Technology team, you get the opportunity to work through complex, challenging, meaningful problems using large data sets and new technologies to expand your skills and experience.

Our Product, Engineering, QA, Operations, and DevOps teams work closely together to deliver scalable; customer centric technology solutions used across the country every day

The Group Product Manager provides strategic product leadership across the Group’s retail businesses, overseeing product strategy, engagement, and experience design for supermarkets commercial, and liquor platforms

About the role

In this senior leadership position, the Group Product Manager is responsible for defining and owning the long‑term strategic direction of a complex product portfolio, ensuring it aligns with enterprise goals, customer expectations, and commercial outcomes. The role plays a key part in identifying new product opportunities, guiding discovery, and shaping investment decisions, while maintaining a forward‑looking view of how the product suite should evolve as the organisation continues to innovate.

A major focus of the role is product leadership. You’ll lead a team of Product Managers and ensure high‑quality product practices across research, prioritisation, roadmap development, release planning, and benefits realisation. With visibility across the full product lifecycle, you’ll intervene where needed to adjust priorities, support delivery, or redirect effort. You’ll also build a high‑performing team by setting clear expectations, coaching your people, and supporting their development and career growth.

The role also acts as a strategic partner to senior stakeholders, translating complex technical information into clear business context and ensuring decisions are informed, connected, and aligned across teams. This includes influencing priorities, creating shared understanding of product direction, and bringing together business and technology leaders around a unified roadmap.

Additionally, the Group Product Manager oversees product operations and governance, embedding cross‑functional ways of working across product, design, engineering, data, and delivery. You’ll define and track product success metrics, lead quarterly planning cycles, coordinate release activities, and ensure decisions consider customer outcomes, compliance, risk, and operational stability throughout the product lifecycle.

About you and your skills

• Proven success owning the strategy and direction of a suite of products, ideally in a fast-paced, complex or matrixed environment.
• Track record of leading product managers and influencing multi-disciplinary teams, including design, engineering, and operations.
• Experience using customer insight, data, and commercial outcomes to shape product decisions and prioritisation.
• Deep understanding of agile and product lifecycle methodologies, and how to scale product management in large organisations.
• Involved in defining product success metrics and monitoring product success
• Proven track record of building strong relationships with multiple business stakeholders and teams
• Contributed to the management of large product suites
• Ability to develop and articulate a long-term vision for one or more proposed technology solutions, balancing a solution and project view with a systems and enterprise view.
• Ability to contextualise a program of work withing a broader context, such as analysing second order implications of a possible solution.
• Ability to identify marketplace opportunities and discover the most appropriate ways and time to capitalise on them.
• Awareness of the competitive landscape of emerging business models reshaping the retail industry, including new ways of working such as the gig economy and crowdsourcing; and the ability to identify opportunities, challenges, and competitive threats from these emerging models.
• Understanding of with the full Technology Lifecycle, including key stages and responsibilities, technologies, vendors, and roles.
• Tertiary qualifications in Business, Technology, Design, or related fields (or equivalent work experience).
• Excellent strategic thinking and commercial acumen, with the ability to connect product delivery to business impact.
• Outstanding communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to inspire and align diverse stakeholders.
• Strong capability in product planning tools and frameworks (e.g. OKRs, JTBD, value stream mapping, road mapping

You’ll be joining a supportive, collaborative environment where cross‑functional partnerships are strong, people are invested, and great product thinking is truly valued.

What’s in it for you?

• Flexible working options: We know that work is only one part of your life, so we actively encourage a positive work-life balance and provide hybrid working options to help you achieve it.
• Office perks: Take advantage of our gym facility and fitness classes, free parking, BBQ area, mini-Coles supermarket, fooderie hub where you can sample new products before they hit the shelves, school holiday program and so much more when you come in.
• Discounts: Eligible team members receive 5% discount all year round on your Supermarket and Liquor online and in-store purchases. We also offer additional periods of double discount (10%) at various times throughout the year. As well as hotdeals exclusive to team members that translate into additional savings.
• Reward through recognition: Give and receive recognition, linked to our Coles values, through our digital recognition platform ‘mythanks’. You can accumulate points to redeem in the online shop for exciting gifts and electronic gift cards from an extensive range of retailers.
• Opportunities for learning and development: No matter where you start within our diverse business, you’ll have experiences, exposure, and education to satisfy you. Discover and explore a variety of career development programs and job-specific training.
• Paid parental leave: We understand how important your life outside work is and offer permanent team members paid parental leave to support you in balancing work and family.
• Investment in your future: Our annual team member share plan offer allows eligible team members to make regular pre-tax salary sacrifice deductions to purchase Coles Group shares.

About the recruitment process

We’re continuing to build a gender equitable team, and a culture that is just as diverse, inclusive and welcoming as the communities we serve. We are committed to creating a workplace that is safe and respectful for our team. We encourage applications from people of all ages, cultures (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples), abilities, sexual orientation and gender identities.

We’re happy to adjust our recruitment process to support candidates with disability. For further information and additional contact details visit the ‘Our Recruitment Process’ section of our careers site or email [email protected]

Job ID: 179089

Employment Type: Full time

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