Senior Product Operations Manager
Wati · Hong Kong
About Wati
Started as a WhatsApp team inbox in 2020, Wati has evolved into an AI-powered customer engagement platform that goes beyond a single channel. Designed for businesses that sell, support, and grow through conversations, Wati observes customer intent in real time, decides the next best revenue action, and executes it across marketing, sales, and support — on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, SMS, and more.
Trusted by over 16,000 customers across 190+ countries, Wati simplifies complex operations and business conversations with a unified inbox, no-code automation, and our intelligent AI layer, Astra.
Proudly backed by Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and Shopify, and recognised as a Premium Partner of Meta and Google.
Wati, the AI-Powered Customer Engagement Platform for Revenue Grow.
About the Role
We're looking for a Senior Product Operations Manager to help shape how our product organization operates, makes decisions, and scales.
You'll work closely with Product and Engineering leadership to connect product strategy with execution, establish effective operating rhythms, build trusted reporting systems, and drive cross-functional alignment.
This is more than a coordination or process management role. We're looking for someone who can independently identify operational challenges, challenge existing ways of working, use data to inform decisions, and implement improvements that deliver measurable outcomes.
You'll also champion AI-powered ways of working, identifying opportunities to automate repetitive tasks, streamline workflows, and improve how product teams access information and make decisions.
Working across Product, Engineering, Design, Data, and Go-to-Market teams, you'll play a key role in building a scalable and effective product operating model as Wati continues to grow.
What You Will Do
Product Operations & Governance
- Own and continuously improve the product organization's operating rhythms, including quarterly and annual planning, roadmap reviews, OKR tracking, leadership reviews, and cross-functional forums.
- Establish clear accountability, decision-making processes, and follow-through mechanisms so teams can operate effectively without constant coordination or escalation.
- Identify operational bottlenecks, unclear ownership, and process inefficiencies, then implement scalable solutions that improve execution and accountability.
- Develop processes and governance frameworks that create consistency while allowing product teams to move quickly.
Data, Insights & Decision Support
- Build and maintain trusted reporting systems that provide leadership with visibility into product performance, roadmap progress, delivery effectiveness, and key product metrics.
- Partner with Product and Data teams to establish consistent metric definitions, improve data quality, and create reliable sources of truth.
- Translate product and operational data into actionable insights, highlighting risks, opportunities, dependencies, and areas requiring leadership decisions.
- Use data and evidence to challenge assumptions, support prioritisation discussions, and inform product investment and resource allocation decisions.
Product Strategy & Business Alignment
- Partner with Product leadership to translate business objectives into product priorities, measurable outcomes, and execution plans.
- Identify dependencies, competing priorities, and trade-offs across initiatives, helping leadership make informed decisions.
- Proactively surface opportunities to improve how product investments, team capacity, and resources are prioritised.
- Develop a strong understanding of Wati's customers, product strategy, and business performance to ensure operational improvements support meaningful business outcomes.
Systems, Tooling & AI Enablement
- Own and optimise the product organization's core tool stack, including platforms such as Heap, Figma, Userpilot, Notion, and Productboard.
- Identify opportunities to simplify workflows, reduce manual work, and improve information accessibility through automation and AI.
- Evaluate, implement, and scale AI-powered workflows that improve research synthesis, feedback analysis, reporting, documentation, and product team productivity.
- Build reusable AI workflows, prompt templates, and playbooks, and drive adoption through training and enablement.
- Measure the impact of tooling and automation initiatives through adoption, time savings, efficiency improvements, and quality of outputs.
Cross-functional Collaboration & Influence
- Act as a key partner to Product, Engineering, Design, Data, and Go-to-Market teams, ensuring alignment on priorities, ownership, dependencies, and execution.
- Identify and resolve cross-functional process gaps, overlapping responsibilities, and operational challenges, escalating only where necessary.
- Facilitate discussions that help teams reach decisions, resolve trade-offs, and move initiatives forward.
- Strengthen the feedback loop between customers, GTM teams, and Product to ensure meaningful insights inform product planning.
- Coordinate product launch readiness and post-launch learning with Product Marketing and relevant stakeholders.
- Influence stakeholders and senior leaders through structured thinking, evidence, and clear communication, even without formal authority.
Continuous Improvement & Ownership
- Independently identify high-impact operational problems, define the desired outcome, and drive solutions from concept through implementation.
- Regularly assess the effectiveness of existing processes and recommend what should be simplified, automated, improved, or discontinued.
- Establish measurable success criteria for operational initiatives and track whether improvements deliver the intended outcomes.
- Help build an operating environment where product teams can spend less time on administrative work and more time delivering customer and business value.
Requirements
- 6+ years of relevant experience in Product Operations, Product Management, Strategy & Operations, Program Management, or a related role, ideally within a technology or SaaS environment.
- Strong understanding of the product development lifecycle, product planning, prioritisation, and modern product management practices.
- Demonstrated experience building, improving, and scaling operational processes across multiple teams.
- Strong analytical capabilities, including experience defining metrics, building reporting frameworks, interpreting data, and translating insights into business recommendations.
- Sound product and business judgement, with the ability to evaluate competing priorities, recognise trade-offs, and connect operational decisions to business outcomes.
- Proven ability to independently identify problems, structure solutions, and drive initiatives through to completion.
- Strong cross-functional stakeholder management skills, including the ability to challenge assumptions, resolve ambiguity, and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.
- Hands-on experience using AI and automation tools to improve workflows, productivity, or decision-making.
- Familiarity with product and collaboration tools such as Jira, Notion, Confluence, Productboard, or similar platforms.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present complex information clearly and facilitate effective discussions.
- Comfort working in a fast-paced, high-growth environment where priorities evolve.
Nice to Have
- Experience scaling Product Operations within a growing SaaS or technology organisation.
- Previous experience partnering directly with Heads of Product, Engineering leaders, or senior business stakeholders.
- Experience supporting product portfolio planning, resource allocation, or strategic prioritisation.
- Familiarity with SQL, product analytics platforms, or business intelligence tools.
- Experience implementing AI-assisted workflows using Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Glean, Notion AI, or similar tools.
- Experience with no-code or low-code automation tools such as Zapier, Make, or n8n.
- Experience designing reusable AI workflows, prompt libraries, or internal playbooks.
- Experience with OKR frameworks, product launch operations, or GTM coordination.
What Success Looks Like
Within your first 6 to 12 months, we would expect you to:
- Establish reliable planning, review, and execution cadences that operate with clear accountability and minimal manual follow-up.
- Improve the quality, consistency, and reliability of product performance reporting so leadership can make decisions with confidence.
- Identify and deliver meaningful improvements to product workflows through process redesign, automation, and AI adoption.
- Strengthen cross-functional collaboration by clarifying ownership, resolving operational friction, and improving decision-making.
- Demonstrate the ability to independently identify important problems, propose solutions, and influence improvements beyond your immediate responsibilities.
The opportunity: This role offers scope to grow into a broader Staff-level Product Operations position through sustained impact on product decision-making, cross-functional influence, and the overall product operating model.