Fractional Product Lead - 3 month contract

We're customer obsessed. We put the customer at the heart of everything we do - and we're looking for people who feel the same way.

About Bike Club

Bike Club is the easiest way to keep kids on the right sized bike. Through our subscription model, we remove the hassle of buying, outgrowing and reselling children's bikes, so families always have the right bike, right when they need it. We are a purpose led, fast-growing business built on ease, care, progress and joy - with a relentless focus on customer growth, retention and building a more circular approach to children's cycling. Role Summary and Engagement Bike Club is looking for a fractional Product Lead to lead the member product, turn customer needs and commercial priorities into a clear direction and a prioritised roadmap, and deliver measurable improvements.

The role

combines senior Product leadership with practical discovery and delivery coordination in a lean team. The Product Lead will also establish an AI-enabled Product function, using AI to speed up customer insight, discovery, prototyping and experimentation. They will identify where AI and automation can improve the member experience or business efficiency, and turn the strongest opportunities into prioritised, measurable initiatives. This is a part-time fixed-term employment or freelance contract estimated at 3 days per week for a period of 3 months. Key Responsibilities Product direction and roadmap: own the direction and roadmap across the member lifecycle: joining, managing a subscription, ongoing membership, exchange and retention. Balance member value with operational efficiency, cost and business priorities. Discovery: lead discovery with members and colleagues across Marketing, Customer Service, Operations and markets. Use research, behavioural data and service insight to define problems before committing to solutions. Lifecycle and retention: work jointly with Marketing and the retention owner on lifecycle journeys, retention initiatives, experiments and shared measures. Product owns the supporting experience and requirements. Marketing owns campaign and channel execution.

Requirements

and backlog: turn agreed priorities into clear requirements, user stories and acceptance criteria. Maintain one prioritised product backlog, including operational improvements and approved AI or automation initiatives. Investment cases: build proportionate cases for investment, setting out expected benefits, cost, dependencies and how outcomes will be measured. Recommend stopping or deferring work where value is insufficient. Delivery: agree delivery commitments with Engineering using realistic estimates and available capacity. Coordinate stakeholders, adoption and launches with the combined QA and Delivery role, keeping risks and changes visible. Marketing autonomy: support Marketing with appropriate content, landing-page and experimentation capabilities. Agree the boundary between the member product, CRM and support tools. AI in Product work: use AI routinely for research synthesis, analysis, requirements development, prototyping and experiment design, and validate findings against customer evidence. Prioritise valuable applications with Marketing, Customer Service, Operations and the Data and Automation function. Test assumptions and build proportionate business cases. Customer-service automation should support the wider member journey. Share responsibility with Marketing for using AI to support lifecycle insight, proposition testing and retention experiments, with agreed measures of customer and commercial impact. Leave things in a better state: because the engagement is part-time and time-limited, document the roadmap, backlog, ways of working and AI approach so the team can continue without the Product Lead, and hand over clearly at the end.

Requirements

Extensive Product Management experience including owning a digital product roadmap and delivering measurable customer and commercial improvements, preferably in a subscription, membership or related consumer business. Strong discovery skills, including customer interviews, journey mapping, data interpretation, problem definition and testing assumptions before investment. Commercial judgement: can compare value, effort, cost and risk, build practical investment cases and make clear prioritisation decisions. Ability to lead across functions, challenge senior stakeholders constructively and maintain focus when priorities compete. Experience working with Engineering, Design, Marketing, Customer Service and Operations through delivery, launch and continuous improvement. Demonstrable experience embedding AI into Product workflows, with examples of faster learning, better decisions or reduced effort. Able to distinguish valuable AI applications from features that add unnecessary complexity. Track record of working independently and effectively in a part-time, fractional or interim capacity, making visible progress in limited days a week. Able to start quickly, and leave behind clear documentation and repeatable ways of working. Measures Of Success Baselines, numerical targets, data sources and review dates are agreed with the executive sponsor and relevant business owners within the first 30 days. Delivery and outcomes are reviewed weekly. Member retention: improvement in the agreed retention or cancellation measure for targeted journeys, assessed jointly with Marketing and the retention owner. Member experience: improvement in self-service completion and reduction in avoidable support contact for prioritised journeys, without deterioration in customer experience. Conversion: improvement in agreed joining and exchange conversion measures, using experiments or comparable cohorts where practical. Speed of learning: reduced time from identifying a customer problem to testing a solution, with evidence that decisions remain grounded in customer insight. AI and automation: validated initiatives deliver agreed improvements in member experien