Leads product strategy, development, and scaling for a digital poker platform and six physical poker rooms. Owns roadmap prioritization, guest onboarding, loyalty, monetization, analytics, experimentation, launches, and platform stability. Builds and mentors product teams while partnering with Engineering, Design, Hospitality, Marketing, Finance, Compliance, and Operations. Drives player acquisition, retention, revenue, regulatory alignment, and integration between online and in-venue experiences.
Description
The Product Lead will lead the strategic direction, development, and scaling of Hijack Poker, our emerging digital poker platform, while also overseeing key product initiatives across Texas Card House's six physical poker room locations. This is a critical leadership role for a fast-growing gaming and hospitality company in a pivotal growth phase. You'll drive product strategy across both digital and in-venue experiences, lead cross-functional teams, and ensure seamless integration between our online platform and physical properties. This role requires deep expertise in mobile gaming, hospitality operations, monetization models, regulatory compliance, and building world-class product organizations.
Key Responsibilities
- Product Strategy & Vision: Define and communicate a compelling product vision for both Hijack Poker and TCH in-venue experiences that drives sustainable growth and competitive differentiation. Set 12–24 month strategy aligned with business objectives and TCH's hospitality mission.
- Team Leadership: Build, mentor, and lead the product team. Foster a culture of data-driven decision-making, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration.
- Roadmap & Prioritization: Develop and maintain product roadmaps for both digital and in-venue initiatives with ruthless prioritization around business impact. Balance player acquisition and retention with technical debt, payments infrastructure, guest experience enhancements, and competitive landscape threats.
- Guest Experience (Digital & In-Venue): Partner with Design, Engineering, and Hospitality teams to create seamless, engaging experiences that drive player acquisition, retention, and lifetime value across both channels. Oversee A/B testing, experimentation frameworks, and feedback loops.
- Player Rewards & Loyalty Programs: Define and optimize the player rewards program strategy to drive repeat play, increase lifetime value, and deepen customer relationships. Ensure alignment between digital and in-venue reward mechanics and redemption pathways.
- Guest Onboarding: Own the full onboarding experience for new guests—from awareness through first session and beyond. Design frictionless flows that convert trial players into retained members across both Hijack and TCH properties.
- Market & Competitive Analysis: Maintain deep market intelligence on the online poker category, competitive landscape, regulatory environment, hospitality trends, and player behavior.
- Monetization & Economics: Define and optimize monetization strategies, rake structures, tournament formats, promotional mechanics, and VIP programs. Track unit economics and lifetime value per player cohort.
- Technical Execution & Stability: Work closely with Engineering leadership to ensure the platform is scalable, reliable, and optimized. Manage technical debt decisions and feature complexity trade-offs.
- Launch & Post-Launch: Oversee product launches, marketing integration, and post-launch optimization. Own KPIs including engagement, retention, churn, and revenue metrics.
- Cross-Functional Leadership: Work with Go-to-Market (marketing, partnerships), Finance, Compliance, and Operations to align product decisions with business constraints (payments processing, regulatory compliance, partnership commitments). Bridge digital and in-venue teams.
- Metrics & Analytics: Define success metrics and establish data infrastructure to measure product health across both digital and physical channels. Make data-driven decisions on feature prioritization and business strategy.
Requirements
Qualifications
- 10+ years in product management, with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles (Lead, Principal PM, Director, VP).
- Proven success shipping and scaling mobile or web gaming products, ideally multiplayer or social games.
- Strong background in monetization strategy, user acquisition, and retention optimization.
- Deep understanding of mobile app development, UX design, and Agile/Lean methodologies.
- Experience building and scaling high-performing product teams.
- Excellent analytical, communication, and problem-solving skills.
- Comfort navigating regulated environments (gaming, financial services, or similar).
Preferred Qualifications
- Direct experience with online poker, casino gaming, or skill-based gaming platforms.
- Background in hospitality, venue operations, or omnichannel retail/gaming experiences.
- Track record scaling a platform from launch to sustained profitability.
- Knowledge of payment processing systems, compliance requirements, and fraud prevention.
- Experience with loyalty programs, rewards mechanics, and customer lifecycle optimization.
- Experience with growth modeling, cohort analysis, and experimentation platforms.
- Passion for poker, gaming culture, and competitive online play.
Similar Jobs
Fintech • Financial Services
Owns the vision, strategy, roadmap, governance, controls, metrics, and adoption of enterprise AI agent operating capabilities supporting marketing operations. Partners with technology, risk, compliance, legal, analytics, and business teams to define scalable agent observability, orchestration, resilience, model routing, cost management, and human-escalation capabilities. Leads prioritization, product discovery, executive reporting, governance forums, and cross-functional delivery in a regulated financial services environment.
Top Skills:
Agent OrchestrationAi AgentsConfluenceEnterprise Ai PlatformsJIRAJira AlignKnowledge ManagementLarge Language Models (Llms)Model RoutingObservability ToolsProduct AnalyticsPrompt OperationsWorkflow Automation
Big Data • Real Estate • Software
Own the strategy, roadmap, implementation, and governance of Realtor.com’s Customer Data Platform. Lead vendor integrations, unified consumer data modeling, audience activation, cross-channel personalization, and self-service capabilities for marketing and product teams. Partner with Engineering, Data Science, Analytics, and Marketing Operations while managing vendor relationships, executive communications, platform investment, and measurable business outcomes.
Top Skills:
Ai/Ml DecisioningAmplitudeAudience SegmentationAuth0BrazeCordialCustomer Data Platform (Cdp)Event StreamingIdentity ResolutionIterableReal-Time Activation PipelinesRecommendation SystemsSnowflakeSQLTwilio Segment
Financial Services
Lead the strategy and delivery of AI-ready data products within Card Data & Analytics. Partner across data platform engineering, analytics engineering, AI/ML, product, governance, risk, and controls teams to improve data quality, modeling, discoverability, lineage, documentation, privacy, and readiness. Translate business needs into governed data products, shape roadmaps, prioritize investments, drive execution across complex initiatives, and communicate outcomes to technical and executive stakeholders.
Top Skills:
AIAnalytics EngineeringData GovernanceData LineageData ModelingData PipelinesData Platform EngineeringMachine LearningMetadata LayersModern Data WarehousingRetrievalSemantic Layers
What you need to know about the Austin Tech Scene
Austin has a diverse and thriving tech ecosystem thanks to home-grown companies like Dell and major campuses for IBM, AMD and Apple. The state’s flagship university, the University of Texas at Austin, is known for its engineering school, and the city is known for its annual South by Southwest tech and media conference. Austin’s tech scene spans many verticals, but it’s particularly known for hardware, including semiconductors, as well as AI, biotechnology and cloud computing. And its food and music scene, low taxes and favorable climate has made the city a destination for tech workers from across the country.
Key Facts About Austin Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 180,500; 13.7% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Dell, IBM, AMD, Apple, Alphabet
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, hardware, cloud computing, software, healthtech
- Funding Landscape: $4.5 billion in VC funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Live Oak Ventures, Austin Ventures, Hinge Capital, Gigafund, KdT Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Silverton Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: University of Texas, Southwestern University, Texas State University, Center for Complex Quantum Systems, Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Texas Advanced Computing Center
