Role At A Glance
Reporting To: Chief Technology Officer
Location: Hybrid, with 1 day per week in Manchester or Belfast Office
Employment Type: Full-Time, Permanent
Department: Technology (CTO Office)
Products Owned: ANSEL (AI SOC automation platform) and the CloudGuard Portal
Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience
About the Role
This is a newly created role and the first dedicated product management position at CloudGuard. ANSEL, our AI-driven SOC automation platform, and the CloudGuard Portal, the front-of-house dashboard where clients see their service running live, are where the majority of our intellectual property and commercial value sit. The Product Manager will own both end to end: the strategy, the roadmap, the customer insight that shapes them, and the discipline that gets them shipped.
You will report directly to the CTO and work across engineering, SOC operations, Customer Success and the executive team. You will spend as much time with customers, analysts and the market as you do with the backlog, and you will be expected to hold the organisation to account on what we said we would build and when we said we would build it.
This is not a role for a backlog administrator. CloudGuard needs someone with a clear point of view on where these products should go, the evidence to support it, and the credibility to carry engineers, executives and customers with them.
Key Responsibilities
Product Ownership: ANSEL & the CloudGuard Portal
- Own the vision, strategy and roadmap for ANSEL, our AI-driven SOC automation platform, and the CloudGuard Portal, our client-facing service dashboard.
- Define what good looks like for each product: the problems they solve, the outcomes they deliver, and the measures that prove it.
- Maintain a single prioritised roadmap that balances customer demand, commercial opportunity, SOC operational need and technical debt.
- Own the product backlog in Azure DevOps, writing clear epics, features, user stories and acceptance criteria that engineering can act on without needing translation.
- Make and defend prioritisation calls, including the decisions not to build something, and make the reasoning visible to everyone affected by it.
- Own the end-to-end client experience within the Portal, from first login to daily operational use, so customers can see their service live, understand their metrics, and act on what needs their attention.
Customer Insight & Market Intelligence
- Run a continuous programme of customer discovery, including interviews, feedback sessions, usage analysis and win/loss reviews.
- Work closely with Customer Success and the customer experience team to systematically capture, triage and act on feedback from live accounts, rather than letting it disappear into service reviews.
- Spend time with the SOC analysts who use ANSEL every day. They are as much a user group as our customers, and their friction is product signal.
- Maintain a clear view of the competitive and vendor landscape across MDR, SOC automation, SIEM and adjacent Microsoft security tooling, and know precisely how CloudGuard differentiates.
- Track market direction, regulatory movement and shifting buyer expectations, and translate them into product implications rather than observations.
- Support sales and marketing with product positioning, messaging, demonstrations and competitive insight.
Working with Engineering
- Work day to day with our engineering and platform teams in Azure DevOps, operating an agile delivery model across Kanban boards and CI/CD pipelines.
- Participate fully in the delivery cadence, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, reviews and release planning, providing clarity on the why while the teams own the how.
- Ensure every piece of work carries a clear problem statement, defined acceptance criteria and an agreed measure of success before it enters the build pipeline.
- Partner with engineering leadership on technical trade-offs, sequencing and capacity, balancing new capability against platform stability, security and scale.
- Support release management, including release notes, internal enablement, and customer-facing communication of what has shipped and why it matters.
Stakeholder Accountability & Executive Reporting
- Run a regular weekly and sprint-based cadence that keeps stakeholders informed, aligned and accountable to the commitments they have made.
- Chair product steering groups, capturing decisions and driving actions through to closure.
- Produce clear, honest reporting on product progress, adoption, risk and roadmap change for the CTO, the wider leadership team and the board.
- Own the product content within investor and board material, including roadmap narrative, product metrics, market positioning and competitive context.
- Escalate early rather than reporting late. When commitments slip, we want to know while there is still time to do something about it.
Commercial & Lifecycle Ownership
- Work with the CTO and commercial leadership on packaging, pricing and service tiering for ANSEL and Portal capability.
- Build the business case for significant product investment, including build, buy or partner decisions.
- Define and track the product metrics that matter, such as adoption, engagement, automation coverage, analyst time saved, and the operational indicators of a healthy platform.
- Own the full product lifecycle, including the deprecation and sunset of features that no longer earn their place.
- Ensure product decisions account for the security, compliance and data protection obligations of an MSSP operating in regulated environments.
About CloudGuard
CloudGuard is a UK-based Microsoft Security specialist MSSP – built differently from the ground up. Operating dual Security Operations Centres in Manchester and Belfast, we combine deep Microsoft security expertise with human-led operations to deliver security that is measurable, scalable, and continuously evolving. We exist to close the gap between the security organisations think they have and the security they actually need. Security Done Different is not a tagline, it’s how we operate every day.
What We’re Looking For
Experience & Background
- Proven experience as a Product Manager or Product Owner for a technical B2B software, SaaS or managed service platform.
- Demonstrable ownership of a product roadmap from discovery through to delivery and measurable outcome, not just feature delivery against someone else’s plan.
- Strong track record of working directly with engineering teams in an agile environment, with hands-on experience of Azure DevOps, Jira or equivalent.
- Experience running customer discovery and market research, and turning what you learn into prioritised, evidenced product decisions.
- Confident presenting to executive audiences, with experience producing board or investor-level material.
- Background in cybersecurity, managed security services or a SOC environment is a significant advantage. Familiarity with the Microsoft security landscape (Sentinel, Defender, Entra) is highly desirable.
- Exposure to AI or automation products, with a practical understanding of what these technologies can and cannot yet do reliably.
Skills & Qualities
- Commercially minded. You understand that a product exists to create value for customers and for the business, and you can articulate both.
- Evidence-led. You form strong opinions from research and data, and you change them when the evidence changes.
- Exceptional communicator, equally credible writing a board paper, running a customer workshop, or debating a design decision with an engineer.
- Comfortable holding senior people to account without damaging the relationship.
- Decisive under uncertainty. You would rather make a clear call and adjust than wait for perfect information.
- Genuinely curious about the technology. You do not need to write code, but you should want to understand how ANSEL actually works.
- Organised and disciplined, but adaptable. CloudGuard moves fast, and part of the product function you will be building yourself.
Qualifications
- Degree-level education or equivalent professional experience.
- A recognised product or agile qualification such as Pragmatic Institute, SAFe POPM or Certified Scrum Product Owner is desirable. Practical delivery capability matters more than certification alone, demonstrable over at least 5 years in product roles.
- You must be a UK Citizen and resident.
What You Can Expect from CloudGuard
- Full ownership of the two products that carry the majority of CloudGuard’s intellectual property and commercial value.
- A direct line to the CTO and a seat in the conversations where technology strategy is actually set.
- The opportunity to build the product function from the ground up and shape how it works as the business scales.
- A genuinely progressive, forward-thinking environment. We are not a traditional MSSP and we don’t operate like one.
- Dual SOC operations in Manchester and Belfast, a business with real scale, real clients, and real ambition.
- A leadership team that is accessible, invested in your development, and direct in its communication.
- Competitive salary and benefits package, reviewed regularly as the business grows.
How to Apply
Send your CV and a brief cover note explaining why CloudGuard and this role are the right fit for you. We are more interested in who you are and what you’ve delivered than a perfectly formatted application.
CloudGuard is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to building a team as diverse as the clients we protect.
