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Accelerate your roadmap, lead cross-functional engineering teams, and scale your digital assets with top-tier freelance product directors and CPOs. Our AI-driven platform matches you with vetted, available experts tailored to your industry.
About the role
Strategic Product Leadership for German Enterprises
An interim Head of Product bridges the gap between high-level business strategy and technical execution. In Germany, this role often requires navigating both the agile startup ecosystem in cities like Berlin and the structured processes of established Munich-based companies or the Mittelstand. These freelance leaders align your product vision with local market demands, manage stakeholder expectations across departments, and mentor internal product management teams to ensure operational continuity.
Core Deliverables of an Interim Product Leader
- Definition and refinement of the long-term product vision and strategic roadmap.
- Alignment of engineering, design, and marketing teams toward shared KPI goals.
- Introduction of standardized product discovery, validation, and delivery frameworks.
- Evaluation of the existing product organization to design scalable team structures.
- Management of day-to-day agile processes, sprint planning, and backlog grooming.
Essential Expertise and Tools
Experienced freelance product leaders bring deep knowledge of modern discovery and delivery methodologies. They are highly proficient in product analytics, user research, and roadmapping tools such as Productboard, Amplitude, Jira, and Confluence. Beyond technical tools, they possess strong leadership capabilities to steer cross-functional teams, implement objective and key results frameworks, and foster a data-driven product culture that accelerates time-to-market.
Why Hire a Freelancer Instead of a Permanent Executive
Recruiting a permanent executive can take several months, leaving critical initiatives stalled. A freelance product director steps in immediately to stabilize teams during sudden leadership departures, manage transitional phases, or lead high-risk product launches. This agile approach allows German organizations to access seasoned leadership on demand, optimize development budgets, and benefit from external best practices without committing to a long-term contract.
Meet FRATCH Heads of Product
Fabian Oechsner
Head of Product / Product Owner
Last position:
Head of Product / Product Owner at XXXLdigital (XXXLutz KG)
Developing a product vision and strategy
Creating a roadmap
Improving stakeholder communication
Introducing an outcome-oriented roadmap
Aligning with stakeholders and creating transparency
Defining relevant product metrics as a KPI tree
Initiating measures to improve product quality and measurability
Supporting the introduction and migration of the new Identity Provider (IDP)
Marcel Oelschläger
Freelance Senior UX/UI Designer & Innovation Consultant
Last position:
Senior UX Designer | Redesign of a Complex B2B Risk Management Platform at Schleupen SE
trategic Requirements Management: Steered user-centric product development for highly complex analytical platforms in close coordination with Product Owners.
Team Enablement: Provided technical supervision and UX alignment across multiple development teams to ensure consistent implementation.
Translation of Requirements: Translated complex business logic into intuitive, user-centric concepts and workflows along the entire customer journey.
End-to-End Design: Led ideation, conceptualization, and UI design for UX projects, accounting for cross-functional requirements.
Quality Assurance: Ensured strict adherence to and verification of usability standards and web accessibility (WCAG) within a B2B context.
Stakeholder Management: Confidently presented and defended design solutions to senior management and specialized departments.
Cross-functional Collaboration: Acted as the primary interface between Product, Engineering, and Business to resolve conflicting objectives within the design process.
Franco Iaquinta
Senior Manager Sales Marketing
Last position:
Sales Manager charging solutions at MAN Truck & Bus SE
- Development and implementation of the sales strategy and selection of suitable sales models
- Definition of sales goals, target groups, USPs, and offer structure in close coordination with the product strategy
- Building and optimizing sales processes, role distribution, and organizational structure
- Development of a commission model to motivate and steer the sales organization
- Management of the internal sales network, including communication, adaptation of dealer contracts, and training sessions
- Design of a communication and branding approach to strengthen market position
- Selection and development of key marketing channels, and definition of the service promise
- Integration of the sales strategy into existing sales tools and systems
- Initiation and management of sales campaigns, and analysis of operational KPIs
- Continuous collection of feedback from the sales network and derivation of improvement measures
Oliver Köhn
Consultant for data-driven AI solutions
Last position:
Consultant for data-driven AI solutions at Oliver Köhn - IT-Freelancer
- AI-powered automation with a focus on efficiency, information processing, and assistant systems
- Automated email classification (OpenAI, FastAPI)
- Contract analysis for LegalTech (Llama 3, LangGraph)
- Internal knowledge search with RAG (VLLM, Hugging Face)
- Anomaly detection on edge devices (LLAVA, TensorRT)
- Agent system for management reports (LangGraph, Zapier)
Steffen Löschner
Solutions for production and logistics, process optimization, knowledge transfer
Last position:
Interim head of export control at Industrial company
Development of a global standard for the inspection process, training and enabling of the deployed employees, analysis of and advice on individual case decisions
Nikhil Kashid
Head of Product (Contract)
Last position:
Head of Product (Contract) at illuminem
- Leading product strategy and platform development for B2B sustainability solutions.
Jannis Wunderle
Interim Head of Product / Product Manager
Last position:
Product Management Consultant at reliance
- Translated the company’s ESG vision and strategy into a scalable product concept, defining user personas and end-to-end customer journeys.
- Designed a web application covering the full ESG transformation lifecycle.
- Built an interactive prototype (Base44) with user management and core features, enabling rapid stakeholder validation and alignment.
Alberto Fernandez
Product and Transformation expert
Last position:
Head of Product & Services at Bosch Connected Industry
- Responsible for the BCI product portfolio, application services, operations and customer support
- Developed a new strategy that utilizes Agentic AI to transform manufacturing shopfloors
- Led the GenAI integration for product documentation and customer training targeting a >20% cost reduction by reducing the size of the external team
- Restored trust with Bosch as internal customer and VW and secured new contracts by strategically positioning high-potential individuals in key roles, ensuring on-time delivery and increasing transparency
- Implemented a restructuring plan for a product area in a volatile market, targeting a 15% reduction in fixed costs to minimize EBIT impact during challenging years
- Launched a customer satisfaction improvement initiative by refocusing KPIs on customer impact. Established a clear support responsibility in product teams improving response time by 4% and resolution time by 3%
Kateryna Myronenko
Global Product Owner - Digital Solutions
Last position:
Global Product Owner - Digital Solutions at DB Schenker AG
- Led the global ServiceNow HRSD implementation across APAC, Europe, and the Americas, achieving 1.8% agent users supporting 98.2% of employees globally at the intersection of business and IT.
- Owned the product health, backlog, and lifecycle of the HRSD solution, serving 41K+ active users across 30+ locations worldwide.
- Managed business and IT stakeholder alignment for regional rollouts, ensuring successful advancement of digital transformation initiatives.
- Defined and prioritized technical and business requirements to enable scalable and efficient HR processes.
- Co-led Scrum sprint planning and bi-weekly release management, ensuring continuous increment delivery and quality.
- Drove continuous improvement and digital transformation of global HR operations in line with local legal requirements and budgets, including works council approvals and tailored communication and engagement plans to secure global adoption.
- Tools: ServiceNow, SAP SF, JIRA, Tableau, Power BI, Miro, Figma, Confluence, Asana.
- Domains & Skills: Digital Transformation, Product Delivery, Project & Change Management, HR Tech, Product Ownership, Agile Delivery, Stakeholder Management, UX/Data Insights.
Nabil Chouaib
Director of Product Management
Last position:
Director of Product Management at IZICAP
- Product manager/ owner for the data, web and mobile teams (Java, REST API, Angular, React, Flutter)
- Close collaboration with the executive team (CPO & CTO) to help them make decisions by representing the product voice
- Managed sprints in an agile workflow (SCRUM & Kanban) including sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives and backlog management for two teams, covering requirements and ticket grooming/estimation
- Moderation of SCRUM meetings
- Wrote epics and user stories in close collaboration with engineering team leads, translating business requirements into technical user stories
- Definition and execution on OKRs
- Designed, built and hired a product structure of eight individuals, including product managers, a UI/UX designer and a product analyst
- Results: increased offer activation rate eightfold.
Thomas Martin
Interim - Head of Product
Last position:
Interim - Head of Product at THE MARCOM ENGINE
- Leading 8 content teams and coordinating the tech teams
- Ensuring quality requirements of the apps for BMW & MINI worldwide (customer rating 4.5/5)
- 25% more effective content delivery
- Improved internal workflows
- UX product improvements for 10% more reach and 5% more app users in 3 months
Roland Judas
Business Analyst Generative AI solutions
Last position:
Business Analyst Generative AI solutions at Nextedge Technologies
- Conducting market analyses for GenAI solutions
- Developing the go-to-market strategy for an international GenAI/RAG solution
- Supporting the recruitment of offshore specialists in India
- Supporting the sales team
Mohammad Speen
AI Consultant | Digital Transformation | AI Solutions
Last position:
AI instructor (German & English)
Presenting AI-related topics in German and English, supporting learners, and working in a highly project-oriented way.
Boas Betzler
CTO, Complex Cloud Solutions
Last position:
Technical Leader and Executive Sponsor, AI Solution Assistant
- Product owner and Executive Sponsor for AI Assistant trained on a knowledge base of past solution designs, RFP documents, and current product documentation
- Used by close to 100 global architects and engineers in pre-sales and post-sales
- Generates full solution documents with requirement driven architecture decisions, solution overview, diagrams, bill of material, roles and responsibility matrix
- Technologies: AI, LLM, Chat Bot, RAG, Agentic AI, Vector Databases, Public Cloud
Thomas Töpsch
Head of Product & Software
Last position:
Head of Product & Software at UZE ADS Europe GmbH
- Further development of a roof-mounted advertising unit for mobile digital advertising, including sensors such as GPS, light sensors, and 2D cameras
- Development of a service tool for commissioning and remote service control
- Development of a marketplace to manage devices, partners, and advertising campaigns
- Communication with the regulatory authority (KBA) as key account manager
- Business model development in data-driven business
- Development and coordination of service processes and workflows
- Building a network of service partners in Germany
- Strategy development, restructuring, and M&A processes
Discover over 15,000 top freelancers
Heads of Product statistics
Typical experience
19 years
Average project duration
2.6 years
Certifications per freelancer
2
Top business areas
Product Development, Information Technology, Project Management
Top industries
Information Technology, Manufacturing, Professional Services
Most common languages
German, English, French
Bachelor's degree or higher
93%
Master's degree or higher
49%
Doctorate
12%
Salary / Daily Rate Distribution
The chart shows how the daily rates of freelancers in this role are distributed, based on recent contracts on our platform. Each bar covers a rate range — its height shows how many freelancers charge within that range. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
Average rates for Heads of Product & Seniority distribution
Rates are based on recent contracts and do not include FRATCH margin.
The average daily rate is the mean of all daily rates from recent contracts of comparable freelancers on our platform.
The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.
Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
Frequently Asked Questions
Curious about FRATCH? Find the answers you need
A freelance Head of Product steps in to define product strategy, align development teams, and optimize the overall roadmap. They establish efficient agile processes, mentor junior product managers, and ensure that product development closely aligns with business goals.
While a product owner focuses on the detailed execution of the backlog and daily development tasks, an interim VP of Product operates at a strategic level. They oversee the entire product portfolio, manage cross-functional communication, and align product initiatives with long-term company objectives.
Look for a proven track record of scaling digital products in similar industries, strong stakeholder management skills, and familiarity with the German market. A top-tier CPO or product director should also demonstrate deep expertise in agile methodologies, data analytics, and team leadership.
This depends heavily on your company culture and target market. While English is the standard language for product teams in international startups, a fluent German-speaking product leader is highly beneficial when collaborating with traditional Mittelstand stakeholders or local compliance departments.
Companies typically hire an interim product director during critical transition periods, such as a sudden leadership vacancy, a major strategic pivot, or when preparing for a scaling phase. They provide immediate stability and expertise without the long hiring cycles of permanent executives.
Yes, many experienced freelance product executives work highly effectively in a remote or hybrid model. However, for initial onboarding, team alignment workshops, and strategic board meetings, occasional on-site presence in your German office is often recommended to build trust.
Success is measured by concrete deliverables such as improved shipping velocity, clearer roadmap alignment, and overall team performance. A successful interim Head of Product leaves behind structured frameworks, documented processes, and a highly motivated internal team ready for the permanent hire.
Most contracts for an interim product manager at a leadership level run for several months, depending on the complexity of the project. This duration provides enough time to stabilize the product organization, execute strategic milestones, and facilitate a smooth handover.
Request a Free Demo
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Philipp Thomaschewski
FRATCH CEO
