Interim product leadership

A senior product person embedded in your team, part time somewhere between 60 and 100 percent depending on need, over several months, when the product seat is suddenly open and recruiting the permanent hire will take half a year. We run product day to day, work in a way the team can pick up, and hand over cleanly when your hire starts.

The problem this solves

A product lead resigns, a reorg leaves a team without an owner, or a new bet needs someone senior before there is anyone to give it to. Recruiting the right person takes months. Meanwhile three things quietly stop happening: the roadmap stops being prioritised, leadership stops hearing what the product team is doing and why, and “what should we build next” gets answered by whoever is nearest.

The usual options both have a cost. Waiting for the hire means months of drift on decisions that were urgent when the seat emptied. Spreading the role across the existing team means senior engineers and designers doing prioritisation on the side, on top of the job they were hired for.

What we actually do

1. Take the seat. One senior consultant embeds in your team and runs product: prioritisation, discovery, stakeholder work, and the weekly decisions that keep engineering unblocked. Interim rather than fractional, meaning one client and real operational ownership, part time somewhere between 60 and 100 percent of a full-time week depending on need.
2. Work in the open. Hypotheses, prioritisation reasoning, and discovery work happen with the team rather than in a document. The aim is that the ways of working are familiar to the team by the time the engagement ends, because they have been part of them for months.
3. Build the handover in from the start. The engagement points at your permanent hire. We document as we go, and when you recruit, we can help sharpen the profile based on what the months in the seat showed the role actually needs.

What you leave with

• Product decisions made during the gap instead of queued behind the recruitment.
• A team that has worked inside a discovery and prioritisation routine for months.
• A clean handover, and a sharper picture of who to hire.

Who it’s for, format, and duration

This is for a CEO, CTO, or Head of Engineering holding a product gap they didn’t plan for: a departure, a reorg, or a new bet that needs senior product ownership now. The buyer is rarely a product leader, since that’s the role sitting empty.

The format is one senior consultant, embedded part time, somewhere between 60 and 100 percent of full time depending on need. Engagements on record run from a few months (Teemyco) to a year (Yepstr), with most somewhere in between. We staff these seats with senior consultants.

One honest note: an interim keeps the seat filled until your hire starts, and the recruitment still has to happen. The value is that the months in between produce decisions, working methods, and a clearer hiring profile instead of drift.

Book a call

If your product seat is empty and the recruitment clock has already started, email hello@scilla.studio. We’ll book 20 minutes, this week if it’s urgent, to see whether your needs and our skills are a match.