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New roles part of Zoopla’s commitment to create highly-skilled roles in Product & Technology
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Company recently announced first ever Software Engineering apprenticeship
Zoopla, the UK’s most comprehensive property destination, has announced a wave of new hires to its Product & Technology team. The new recruits reflect the company’s emphasis on innovation and its drive to constantly improve the products and services it offers its customers.
Jo Wickremasinghe joins Zoopla as Product Director. Jo joins from Babylon Health and has previously held senior roles leading digital product teams at a diverse range of businesses including News UK, Which?, Microsoft and BBC. At Zoopla Jo will lead a team responsible for all consumer products and experiences including Zoopla.co.uk, Prime Location, Smart New Homes and the Zoopla mobile apps.
Also joining Zoopla from Babylon Health, Simon Woodward has taken up the role of Product Director. Simon is leading the re-imagining of the Agent CRM product portfolio, and alongside his work at Babylon Health he has held senior roles at King, BMC Software and Hewlett Packard.
Joining from the world of fintech is Dan Martins. Dan, whose most recent role was Chief Product Officer at Azimo, is joining Zoopla as Product Director. At Zoopla he will lead a 60 strong team and have responsibility for Customer Growth, charged with re-imagining products which help customers grow their business, on and off Zoopla. Prior to Azimo Dan worked at Microsoft where he led the redesign of Skype for iOS.
Zoopla’s new Director of Product Design, Tony Collins, joins the company from Auto Trader UK. Tony spent ten years at Auto Trader, leading the company’s Product Design teams building tools and services for millions of consumers and thousands of customers. At Zoopla Tony will be responsible for leading Product Design and User Research.
Joining from Starling Bank, where she held the role as Product Director, Sarah Guha is taking up a role at Zoopla as Consumer Product Lead. In her role Sarah will be responsible for Zoopla’s Search, Recommendations and Listing experiences. Prior to her time at Starling Bank Sarah held senior roles in San Francisco with design and technology agency Beyond and in Hong Kong with Haymarket Media Asia.
Commenting on the new hires Dave Wascha, Zoopla’s Chief Product & Technology Officer, said: “Zoopla has a once-in-lifetime opportunity to re-imagine the property industry and we are thrilled to have such a talented group of leaders join the company. The new hires bring with them unrivalled experience and a passion for innovation along with strong leadership credentials. We have no doubt they will make a real impact in the months and years ahead in our ambition to offer our customers an ever-improving set of products and services which they can use to reach their goals.”
In July Zoopla announced a hiring spree in Product & Tech with 50 new roles available. This is the company’s second recruitment drive in the last year, building on December’s announcement that it was set to create a raft of new roles in 2020 including dozens of specialist roles in its Product & Technology teams.
In addition to the new roles Zoopla has launched its first apprenticeship in Software Engineering, in conjunction with the Tech She Can Charter, with ten roles available. Of the ten roles seven went to female candidates, reflecting the company’s belief that having a more diverse workforce will help better serve the needs of its customers.
Founded in 2007, Zoopla is a successful, multi-tiered property business offering services to renters, buyers, sellers and landlords.
The company returned to private ownership in July 2018 after a purchase by a group led by global private equity firm Silver Lake. Since the purchase a new leadership team has been implementing a focused strategy investing substantially in talent, technology, marketing and sales to help Zoopla enhance the service it offers consumers and to meet its ambitious growth plans.
