Care for Kids Head of Product · Oct 2023–Oct 2026
Built the Growth Engine.
And the System Behind It.
I owned marketplace experimentation and built the product operating system behind it, spanning strategy, capability and new growth.
Built and personally operated, with Codex-assisted implementation.
Connected Marketplace Growth With Product Capability.
Care for Kids helped parents find childcare, with providers paying for enhanced profiles, features and discoverability. Enquiries to paid providers were a meaningful measure of marketplace value.
My remit joined two kinds of work: improving the existing funnel and establishing how product, design and engineering made decisions and delivered. Alongside the core marketplace, I led product and technology work for a new consumer platform.
Growth & Experimentation
Higher Enquiry Yield From a Clearer Search Experience.
I owned a roughly 12-month experimentation roadmap across the marketplace funnel. I framed opportunities and hypotheses, designed multi-variant tests, agreed success and guardrail metrics with the Head of Technology, analysed results and made continue, stop and rollout recommendations.
Customer research and behavioural data challenged assumptions about how parents moved through search results and centre listings. Successive tests explored information density, progressive disclosure, filters, ranking and CTA hierarchy.
Fewer Clicks. Higher Enquiry Yield.
The control gave call, enquiry and tour actions similar visual weight. The hypothesis was that clearer priority and tour-intent pathways could improve valuable submitted enquiries. The test compared control with three CTA treatments while retaining the core result-card content and layout.
The leading variant’s primary CTA click rate fell, while paid-provider enquiry event yield increased. That distinction changed the interpretation: fewer upstream clicks did not necessarily mean less valuable progression.
Control
Variation 1
Source: 2026.4 SRP experiment brief, p. 5. Variation 1 survives here as a low-resolution thumbnail; use this for visual context, not fine UI inspection. Select an image to open its original extracted file.
Higher Paid-Provider Enquiry Event Yield
Events per exposed visitor · leading variant versus concurrent control
I implemented the leading variant as the SRP baseline and carried the hierarchy hypothesis into the centre-listing-page experiment.
- Shifted Focus to the Lower FunnelNegative and inconclusive results shifted attention toward the lower funnel.
- Prioritised Enquiry Yield Over ClicksEvaluate submitted-enquiry yield alongside click behaviour.
- Identified the Need for a Clean RerunTest the transferable hypothesis; measurement concerns led to a clean-rerun plan.
Measurement Checks Prevented a False Winner Call.
I used GA4, Optimizely, Contentsquare and internal data to reconcile experiment evidence and assess test health. In the subsequent centre-listing test, traffic-contamination and geography concerns prevented a clean winner call. A promising signal became a rerun plan, not a claimed commercial win.
Product Strategy & Operating System
Established the Team and System for Product Delivery.
I rebuilt the product, design and engineering operating environment, introducing the first in-house product designer and BA. Product strategy and roadmap development connected customer evidence, provider value and delivery constraints.
A shared design system supported consistent product work and experiment variants. Prioritisation and decision frameworks, quality standards and review processes gave the team clearer delivery, experimentation and decision rhythms.
Connected Fragmented Evidence for Better-Informed Decisions.
I conceived, specified, iterated, tested, debugged and personally operated the AI-assisted product intelligence environment. Codex assisted substantially with implementation.
Experiment evidence, test health and measurement issues
Product judgement, recommendations and executive decision material
Personally specified, tested and operated by Steve · Codex-assisted implementation · Human interpretation and approval
The environment supported evidence reconciliation and decision preparation. I remained responsible for interpreting the evidence; engineering, design, technology leadership and executives retained their respective delivery and approval roles.
New Growth Bet
A Board-Approved Expansion Beyond Childcare.
Alongside the core marketplace, I spearheaded a board-approved expansion into children’s activities and services. I led the consumer/mobile strategy and associated product and technology work.
Parent research and the strategy material explored how families discover activities and services. This was a new product direction alongside an established business, not evidence of realised adoption or revenue.
What I Owned
Built Product Capability Through Hands-On Leadership.
- I Framed and Analysed
- Opportunities, hypotheses, variant designs and experiment results; success and guardrail measures agreed with technology leadership; continue, stop and rollout recommendations.
- I Built and Operated
- Product strategy and the operating model; the Work-Ops environment’s specification, iteration, testing, debugging and personal operation, with substantial Codex-assisted implementation.
- The Team Delivered
- Engineering implemented experiment treatments in Optimizely. QA validated them. Design and technology leaders contributed specialist work; technical remediation was led by technology leadership.
- Executives Approved
- Permanent changes required SLT agreement. The board approved the expansion beyond childcare; I led the strategy and associated product and technology work.