Product
Off-market search for Senior and Principal PMs, Heads of Product, VPs and CPOs, plus Product Design leaders, for VC-backed tech across Australia and New Zealand.
We hire for product judgement: the problems they’ve owned and the bets that paid off, not the title on the brief. Led by Sophia Philippou.
Judgement is the job
A title tells you where someone sat. Judgement is what they did there: the roadmap calls, the things they refused to build, and where the product stood a year later.
A founder usually arrives with a title: a Head of Product, a Senior PM, a Lead Designer. Sophia Philippou spends the one-hour brief a step earlier than that. Is the gap discovery and prioritisation inside one squad, a roadmap nobody owns, a Product organisation that has to grow from five squads to ten, or an executive who can hold the product argument at the board? Each of those calls for a different person, whose judgement has been tested on a different problem, and Sophia would rather find that out in the brief than three interviews in.
The same applies to Design. Perpetuate runs Product Design inside the Product practice, because strong Product organisations hire the two disciplines against the same problem, and the candidates sit in the same market.
Which Product roles does Perpetuate place?
Perpetuate's Product practice places Product Managers, Product Leaders and Product Designers, from a company's first Senior PM to a Chief Product Officer reporting to the board. Sophia Philippou leads every search personally, and each candidate is assessed on product judgement: the problems they have owned, the calls they made under constraint, and what those calls produced.
Product Leaders
Assessed on strategy, how they built and ran the Product organisation, and executive influence.
Chief Product Officer
VP Product
Director / Head of Product
Group Product Manager
Product Managers
Assessed on product judgement, the trade-offs they made and the outcomes that followed.
Staff, Principal, Lead and Senior Product Managers
AI Product Manager
Growth Product Manager
Technical Product Manager
Product Owner
Product Designers
Design leadership and senior craft, run inside the Product practice and assessed against the same problem.
Chief Design Officer
VP Design
Head of Design
Staff, Principal, Lead and Senior Product Designers
Hiring an engineering leader or a marketer in the same window? Stephen Tung's Technical practice and Sophia's Marketing practice run the same off-market process.
See Stephen’s AI/Technical practice →See the Marketing practice →What does a Product search look like in practice?
A Product search with Perpetuate takes one focused hour of your time to brief. Sophia Philippou then researches and maps the market, headhunts off-market, and returns 2-3 personally assessed candidates within 5-10 days, managing both sides through to signed offer. Nothing is advertised at any point.
01
Day 1: one-hour search brief
One focused session with the founder or hiring lead: the product, the stage, the gap in the team, and what the first twelve months in the seat must deliver.
02
Days 2-5: research, market mapping and headhunting
We map the companies that solved a problem like yours, identify the people who did the work, and approach them individually. No job boards, no advertised role.
03
Days 5-10: curated shortlist
2-3 candidates Sophia has assessed herself. For Product Managers: product judgement, trade-offs and outcomes. For Product Leaders: strategy, org leadership and executive influence.
04
Through offer: dual-side intelligence
We manage both sides to a signed offer, reading the candidate's position as closely as yours, so neither party is surprised at the end.
How do we find exceptional Product people who aren't actively looking?
Perpetuate reaches Product people who aren't looking by mapping the market instead of searching a database, by matching candidates on the work they did rather than the keywords on a CV, by selling the problem instead of the job description, and by having Sophia Philippou assess every candidate personally before an introduction. The people worth hiring are employed, shipping, and deleting recruiter templates unread.
We map the market, not a database
Every search starts with the companies that solved your problem at your stage, then the people who did the work there. A database returns whoever last updated their profile.
Pattern matching, not keyword matching
A PM who took a self-serve product to 50,000 users and one who shipped a hardware-adjacent platform to enterprise buyers share a title and little else. We read the work, the trade-offs and what happened next.
We sell the problem, not the job description
Each approach is written for one person and explains why your problem is the more interesting one to work on. Nobody good moves for a list of responsibilities.
Every candidate is personally assessed
Sophia interviews each candidate before you meet them. By the time a shortlist of 2-3 reaches you, the filtering has been done on evidence: what they shipped, the calls they made, and how those calls turned out.
Product searches Sophia has closed
Thirteen Product and Design placements across ten client companies, 2025 to 2026, every one filled without a job ad. Across all practices Perpetuate has made 53 placements for 34 clients since January 2025, and 41% of those clients have hired more than once.
Chief Product Officer
Envirosuite (ASX:EVS)
Senior Product Designer
Atticus. AI verification for the world's largest law firms.
Senior Product Manager; Senior Product Designer
Reapit. Two hires, PropTech.
Design Systems Lead; Data Platform Product Manager
Transmax. Two hires.
Senior Product Designer; Product Manager
Felix Software. Two hires.
Senior Product Manager
ReadyTech (ASX:RDY)
Senior Product Manager
Timescapes. Construction reality capture.
Lead Product Manager
Impact Ag Australia (Atlas Carbon)
Senior Product Manager
Moneycatcha. First PM hire, FinTech.
UI/UX Designer
Domino's Pizza Enterprises (ASX:DMP)
“Their profound understanding of our cultural dynamics, technical requirements, and the intensity needed for success in our fast-paced environment has set them apart.”
Jason Cooper, CEO & Managing Director, Envirosuite (ASX:EVS)
Sophia placed Envirosuite's Chief Product Officer, one of five roles Perpetuate has filled there.
Which companies is our Product practice built for?
Perpetuate's Product practice is built for companies where product judgement decides the outcome: B2B SaaS and software businesses, AI and data companies working with complex technology, venture-backed scale-ups, and established Product organisations adding senior capability. Founders and CEOs come to Sophia Philippou when a generalist or title-driven hire would slow the product down.
First Senior PM hires. Scale-ups replacing a Head of Product who has hit their ceiling. Established teams adding a Principal Designer, or a CPO for the next stage of growth.
In every case the brief starts from the problem: what does this product need done next, and whose judgement has already been tested on something close to it?
✓ B2B SaaS & software
✓ AI, data & complex technology
✓ Venture-backed scale-ups
✓ Established Product organisations
Meet Sophia and the rest of the team on our About page.
Product hiring: questions founders ask
How long does a Product search take with Perpetuate?
One focused hour of a founder's time to brief, then 2-3 personally assessed, off-market candidates within 5-10 days. Perpetuate manages both sides through to signed offer, and the same timeline applies whether the seat is a Senior Product Manager or a Chief Product Officer, in Australia or New Zealand.
Do we need a Head of Product or a Senior Product Manager first?
It depends on the problem the product has, not the org chart. If one squad needs sharper discovery and prioritisation, a strong Senior or Lead Product Manager usually comes first. If nobody owns the roadmap across squads, start with a Head of Product. Sophia Philippou works this through in the one-hour brief, and the title on the search often changes as a result.
Does Perpetuate place Product Designers as well as Product Managers?
Yes. Product Design runs inside Perpetuate's Product practice: Chief Design Officers, VPs and Heads of Design, and Staff, Principal, Lead and Senior Product Designers. Recent placements include Senior Product Designers at Atticus, Reapit and Felix Software and a Design Systems Lead at Transmax, all headhunted off-market.
How does Perpetuate assess a Product Manager differently from a Product Leader?
Product Managers are assessed on product judgement, the trade-offs they made and the outcomes that followed. Product Leaders are assessed on strategy, how they built and ran the Product organisation, and their influence with executives and the board. Both assessments happen before a candidate reaches the shortlist.
The Product person you need probably isn't looking.
Hiring in Product? Talk to Sophia about the market, your brief and where the right talent is likely to sit. One focused hour, then 2-3 personally assessed candidates within 5-10 days.
Start a Product SearchMessage Sophia on LinkedIn →