Chief Product Officer — Social-Infrastructure Portfolio

The mandate

An institutionally backed Saudi social-infrastructure portfolio has accumulated facility-service, digital, maintenance and user-experience offers through individual healthcare, education and civic projects. No executive owns their full lifecycle, and the investment committee has paused expansion until it can distinguish repeatable products from contract-specific bundles. Balance-sheet rotation adds urgency: prospective owners need to understand what transfers with each asset and what depends on shared platform capability.

The perimeter covers approximately SAR 27,100 million in projects and operating assets and 1,100 employees and material partners. Accountability includes product portfolio, customer and user discovery, proposition economics, service design, lifecycle roadmaps, product governance, adoption, partner dependencies and product talent. Project companies retain concession duties, commercial teams own contracts and technology owns engineering execution. The CPO owns product choices and the evidence connecting user outcome, operating model and transferable value.

In social infrastructure, the word product must be used carefully. A patient-navigation service, school facilities workflow, energy-performance offer or civic access platform affects real service environments. Reuse can improve quality, but inappropriate standardisation can ignore clinical, educational, legal or cultural needs. The CPO must define a common core and explicit local boundary for each offer family.

Rotation requires product separability. Rights, data, supplier arrangements, service knowledge, pricing and support must survive ownership change or be priced as transitional dependency. A polished proposition with no transfer path is not an asset product.

Why this seat is open

This urgent new role has no predecessor. The capital review exposed distributed product authority after the annual organisation plan was fixed. The board intends to appoint within six to eight weeks, while interim committees protect active services and transaction work. The position adds accountability and does not displace a concealed incumbent.

What you will own

• Define the product taxonomy, common core and local extension rules.
• Decide which offers to scale, redesign, partner, harvest or retire.
• Build lifecycle economics from mobilisation through asset transfer.
• Integrate user, operator and buyer evidence into roadmaps.
• Establish separability for data, rights, suppliers and support.
• Develop product leaders with commercial and service authority.

Discovery will include public counterparties, facility operators, service professionals, users and prospective asset owners. The product team will identify the outcome and operating context before accepting a requested feature or service variation. Sensitive environments require accessible, culturally appropriate and role-based research. Feedback volume will not substitute for observed behaviour and consequence.

Product economics will include more than bid margin. Mobilisation, integration, training, partner fees, service support, change, liability, renewal and separation costs will form a cohort view. Revenue attached to bespoke effort will be distinguished from repeatable contribution. The CPO will challenge allocation that makes a shared product appear profitable by leaving costs with projects or functions.

The common core will state what remains consistent across assets: service standard, workflow, data definition, assurance, interface or supplier specification. Local extensions require a reason, owner, support model and review date. Regulatory or service-professional needs may justify permanent difference; historic preference will not. Repeated extensions will trigger a core-product decision.

Roadmaps will integrate field performance. Service incidents, user abandonment, workarounds, partner failure, deductions and buyer questions must change priorities. Product reviews will include project, operations, commercial, technology and risk voices, but the CPO retains the recommendation. Pilots have an adoption threshold, economic test and dated scale-or-stop decision.

Separability will be designed early. The team will map intellectual property, licences, data consent, hosting, shared personnel, supplier commitments and transition support. Where a platform remains shared after sale, service levels, exit rights and cost must be explicit. The transaction team should never discover a critical product dependency only after exclusivity.

The first 12 months

Within 75 days, the CPO will classify the 20 largest offer families, identify unsupported variants and assess product leadership. The sponsor will receive scale, reshape, contain and retire recommendations plus separability gaps for transaction candidates.

By month eight, three priority families should use approved core-and-extension models, two products should have full lifecycle economics and the first sale candidate should carry a costed separation plan. At least one low-value offer or variant must be retired without service disruption.

At year-end, unsupported variants should fall 20%, product contribution improve 150 basis points and 90% of new product commitments have approved lifecycle and transfer evidence. Adoption across selected products should rise 15%, with no material transaction discount caused by an undisclosed shared-product dependency.

What the board will measure

• Clear product choices across a previously diffuse portfolio.
• User and service evidence changing investment decisions.
• Repeatable economics without hidden project subsidy.
• Product rights and support transferable through asset rotation.
• Strong product leadership and succession.

The person

You are a Chief Product Officer, service-product executive or portfolio leader with 22–28 years of experience. You have carried accountable scope above SAR 15,700 million and led at least 775 people. Your experience includes physical or public-service environments where product decisions affected operations, partners and long-term contracts.

The board will test an offer you retired despite revenue, a local variation you preserved for genuine service need and a transaction where product separability changed value. You must combine user judgement with financial and operating fluency. Pure digital feature leadership without lifecycle accountability will not qualify.

This onsite Riyadh appointment requires extensive facility, user, authority, partner and investor travel.

Compensation and terms

Fixed compensation is SAR 2.0–2.9 million plus annual incentive and LTI. Measures include product focus, contribution, adoption, service outcomes, separability and succession. Long-term awards follow standard vesting and the final portfolio scope.

Confidentiality

The sponsor, facilities, products, users, partners and proposed transactions remain confidential. Further information is shared under an undertaking after qualification. Rounded values and combined examples protect identity.