We are seeking a highly capable Senior Product Manager to own the Core HR product area within the HR value stream: the employee record, organisational structure, employee lifecycle, and the HR data foundations. You will make Core HR market-fit, compliant, compelling and commercially successful solutions for large, complex organisations across multiple markets, accountable for its adoption, usage, customer satisfaction and commercial contribution.
You will operate with high autonomy across discovery, specification and delivery, acting as the voice of the customer for Core HR inside the organisation. The scope is deliberately broad for a Senior PM role; strategy and commercial ownership sit with the Product Director – HR, and you execute within that direction. You will partner closely with the Payroll and Data & Analytics product teams, whose products consume the data structures you own.
Zellis 2030 commits us to an AI-first ZellisONE platform in which every module is best-of-breed, supporting seamless transitions for customers. Core HR is the foundation of that suite: if the employee record, organisational model and lifecycle events are not clean, extensible and well-governed, neither global payroll nor conversational analytics can work. This role sits at the centre of that dependency: HR capability customers love, built on data the rest of the platform can trust.
How We Work
- Product is organised into long-lived value streams — HR, Payroll, Data & Analytics — each led by a Product Director. You own Core HR within the HR value stream.
- Day to day, you work in a cross-functional agile squad with engineering, design and compliance — a week mixes customer discovery, backlog and specification work with the squad, and a regular cadence with the Product Director – HR and your PM peers in Payroll and Data & Analytics.
- We are moving to an AI-first SDLC, with AI used across specification, build and test — clear, well-specified product thinking matters more, not less.
Market & Customer Insight
- Serve as the primary internal advocate for Core HR customers and users (HR operations, HR business partners, people leaders and employees), conducting market research, customer interviews and discovery to define requirements.
- Monitor UK and international employment law, HR compliance and reporting obligations, and translate them into product implications.
- Maintain a clear view of competitors in core HCM, including how AI-first entrants are changing buyer expectations.
Product Specification & Delivery Leadership
- Own the end-to-end specification for Core HR capability — from employee record and organisational structures to lifecycle events, absence, workflow and self-service — translating needs into epics, features and user stories with engineering and design.
- Drive prioritisation using customer value, commercial opportunity and technical constraint, aligned to the wider HR roadmap set by the Product Director – HR.
- Ensure Core HR capability is designed for multi-country configuration and seamless transition, in line with the ZellisONE commitment.
AI-Enabled Capability
- Contribute to the shift from workflow-driven features to intent-led HR capability, so customers can delegate outcomes rather than operate the system.
- Identify where AI and automation can safely take responsibility within core HR processes and where explicit human control must remain — shipping with explainability, safeguards and escalation paths from the outset.
Data Stewardship & Cross-Product Partnership
- Act as product owner of the core HR data model, meeting the data contracts and semantic-layer definitions that federated reporting and conversational insight depend on.
- Partner with Payroll product management to ensure the pay dependent HR date and flow is clean and dependable.
Go-to-Market & Commercial Contribution
- Support GTM for Core HR releases, including positioning, messaging, packaging and pricing input, launch enablement and readiness.
- Partner with marketing and sales on collateral, demos, customer meetings and RFP responses.
Stakeholder Leadership
- Maintain strong communication loops with the Product Director – HR, product peers and cross-functional groups, presenting direction, evidence and progress to senior stakeholders.
Why Join Zellis Product
- Scale: Zellis pays 4.6m people monthly across the UK and Ireland.
- Building, not maintaining: Core HR is the foundation of ZellisONE; the product decisions made here shape the long-term growth and innovation of the business.
- A small senior team: you work directly with the Product Director – HR and partner PMs in Payroll and Data & Analytics, with a clear route to greater scope as the value stream grows.
Essential
- Deep understanding of core HR / HCM domains: employee records, organisational modelling, lifecycle processes, absence and case management.
- Experience with compliance-heavy, regulated software (HR, payroll, finance).
- Experience working with agile engineering teams.
- Strong communication: able to simplify complexity for diverse audiences and influence without authority.
Desirable
Proven track record (5–8+ years) in software product management, with enterprise SaaS.
Enterprise customers experience with complex organisational structures and multi-country operations.
Data modelling, and how product decisions affect downstream reporting and analytics.
AI-enabled or automation-heavy product capability.
Creating GTM materials: positioning, value propositions and sales narratives.
A HR Related qualification, professional membership or operational/strategic HR role
At Zellis we create market-leading HR & Payroll products and services, to power exceptional employee experiences so that you and your people do better. Our multi-award-winning products pay over five million employees a year, with almost half (42%) of the FTSE 100, 50% of the top retailers and 30% of the top universities in the UK & Ireland as customers, making us the largest provider of Payroll and HR software and managed services.
Our vision is to be the clear leader in pay, reward, analytics, and people experiences. We're passionate about creating an environment where people want to join, belong to, and be part of a progressive organisation. Our values, which were defined with input from all of our 2,000 colleagues, we live and breathe every day:
- Unstoppable together.
- Always learning.
- Make it count.
- Think scale.
Our people are critical to our ongoing success; we’re proud of our inclusive culture that gives you the platform to grow, challenge the status quo and play a crucial role in further enhancing our market position as the leading provider of HR & Payroll software and services. With Zellis you’ll have the chance to stretch and challenge yourself in an environment that’s varied, flexible and hugely supportive.
We also love to reward and recognise our brilliant colleagues. As part of your benefits package, you’ll receive:
- A competitive base salary, plus cash car allowance.
- 25 days annual leave, plus your birthday off and the opportunity to buy additional holiday.
- Private medical insurance.
- Life assurance 4x salary.
- Enhanced pension scheme with company contributions up to 8.5%.
- A huge range of additional flexible benefits across financial & personal wellbeing, lifestyle & leisure.
