Chief Product Officer — Last-Mile Delivery Platform

The mandate

A last-mile delivery platform has accumulated merchant features, recipient options and operational exceptions faster than it has proven their economics. Product teams report adoption, while depots experience fragmented waves, repeated contacts and costly delivery promises. The business is executing an active profitability reset. An urgent CPO appointment must reconnect the product portfolio to the physical network without pausing essential merchant releases.

Approximately 1,875 employees and material partners span product, engineering, design, delivery operations, network planning, commercial, data and customer support from Hamburg. The CPO owns product strategy, portfolio, discovery, design, product operations and lifecycle value, reporting to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive-committee sponsor. Operations controls physical execution; technology retains engineering and security authority.

The first portfolio review will connect each product promise to a network behaviour. Delivery windows, redirection, safe place, collection, returns and status notifications affect stop density, route sequence, contact demand and failed delivery. Features will be assessed on recipient value, merchant value, operational consequence and contribution rather than monthly use alone.

Promise logic must become capacity-aware. Checkout options and merchant APIs should expose services that the destination, parcel and cut-off can support. The CPO will establish graceful alternatives when capacity changes. Selling an option that operations later withdraw creates avoidable contact and weakens both merchant conversion and recipient trust.

Merchant integration is a product, not a sequence of custom projects. Labels, manifests, addresses, service selection, tracking and returns need stable contracts, diagnostics and version discipline. Implementation teams should resolve configuration without engineering intervention for routine cases. Bespoke work will require a clear economic and strategic reason.

Recipient experience needs accessible exception design. Missed delivery, address correction, proof dispute, damaged parcel and accessibility requests matter more than ideal tracking screens. Research will include people who did not complete a task and delivery staff who absorb the consequence. Dark patterns that steer recipients towards the cheapest option without informed choice are unacceptable.

Depot users are core customers of the platform. Dispatchers, couriers and support teams require concise information and workable overrides. Product managers will observe peak operations and measure extra touches introduced by changes. A recipient feature cannot be called successful if it shifts hidden workload into a depot.

Product economics will include acquisition, engineering, support, service credits, operational labour and network effect. Finance and product will agree unit measures by cohort and service. The CPO will retire or reprice products whose value depends on excluding material execution cost, while protecting contractual and customer transition obligations.

Prioritisation will use explicit capacity. Regulatory, reliability, merchant, recipient and platform work compete for the same teams. The CPO will show what is displaced by every urgent request and reserve investment for technical health with the CTO. A prominent merchant may sponsor discovery, but cannot privately control the roadmap.

Experimentation must respect operational risk. Trials will be geographically bounded, measurable and reversible, with depot readiness and customer communication. Peak periods are not convenient test laboratories unless the hypothesis specifically concerns peak and additional controls are accepted. Results must include downstream service and cost, not just digital conversion.

Data and models support address quality, promise selection, ETA and delivery preference. The CPO will require confidence, fallback and monitoring in the user journey. An optimisation score must not silently remove a paid service or make a consequential choice that recipients and operators cannot understand.

Platform reliability belongs in product decisions. Product and technology leaders will agree service objectives, degradation priorities and incident communication for checkout, labels, routing inputs and tracking. During disruption, the experience should make uncertainty visible and preserve safe operations rather than display a precise but invented estimate.

The successor must stabilise a talented but overextended organisation. Product domains, decision rights and discovery standards will be clarified. Leaders will be assessed on outcomes sustained in the network, not launch volume. Merchant and operational relationships held by the incumbent require an orderly, candid handover.

What you will own

• Last-mile product and portfolio strategy.
• Network-aware delivery promise design.
• Merchant integration and self-service products.
• Recipient, courier and depot experience.
• Product economics and lifecycle decisions.
• Experiment, model and operational-risk standards.
• Product–technology reliability partnership.
• Product organisation, transition and succession.

The first 12 months

Within 30 days, protect critical releases, map product promises to operating cost and identify features creating hidden depot or contact workload. Complete incumbent handover across major merchants, platform dependencies and pending commitments.

By month six, deploy capacity-aware promise rules in priority markets, establish merchant integration standards and introduce contribution-based portfolio reviews. Retire at least five low-value custom paths with controlled migration.

At twelve months, improve product-attributable contribution by EUR 55 million, reduce failed-delivery contacts by 25% and cut standard merchant integration time by 40%. Ninety per cent of new propositions must carry verified network economics, while core product availability exceeds 99.95% and no material recipient right is weakened.

What the sponsor will examine

• Digital promises grounded in destination capacity.
• Depot and courier workload included in discovery.
• Merchant customisation governed by platform value.
• Portfolio decisions using full lifecycle economics.
• Experiments bounded and reversible in live operations.
• Product leaders accountable beyond launch.

The person

You bring 22–28 years in digital product leadership across parcel, logistics, marketplaces, e-commerce infrastructure or another real-time network. Your record includes CPO authority, merchant APIs, consumer experience, product economics, operational experimentation and platforms used by a workforce above 1,500.

Candidates must show a popular feature they changed or retired after measuring physical-network consequence, and a promise system that adapted responsibly to capacity. This permanent role is onsite in Hamburg with regular depot, courier and merchant contact.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is EUR 285,000–390,000 plus annual incentive and long-term participation linked to contribution, reliable promises, merchant enablement, recipient outcomes and product succession. The permanent onsite Hamburg CPO reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive-committee sponsor. Accelerated appointment will include a controlled incumbent transition.

Confidentiality

The platform, merchants, product roadmap, recipient research, depot economics, technology design and succession context are confidential. Further access follows conflicts, credentials and signed confidentiality. Applicants must not contact delivery networks, retailers, product suppliers or employees to identify the organisation conducting this search.