Product Leader & Builder
11 years commanding ships. Now shipping product.
Strategic product leader with 5+ years delivering complex SaaS platforms, following 11 years at sea as a Senior Deck Officer.
Open to opportunitiesOpen an application from the Dock below.
JamesOS
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Product leader with a rare combination: deep operational experience from 11 years at sea, and 5+ years building complex SaaS platforms from the ground up.
Strategic Product Leader with 5+ years delivering complex SaaS platforms, following 11 years at sea as a Senior Deck Officer. Building AI-powered tools and shipping great product.
Product
Maritime
90POE
Nov 2025 — Present
Leading strategy and delivery for the Crewing platform. Overseeing product vision, roadmap, and execution across compliance, HR, payroll, and workforce planning.
90POE
Sep 2022 — Nov 2025
Built the Chartering platform 0→1 — an end-to-end voyage management solution. Shaped it from concept to production across three major shipping companies.
Delivered MVP in under 18 months. Won Zodiac Maritime (~150 ships), Golden Union (~35 ships), and Kyklades (~25 ships) through demos, targeted feature additions, and hands-on onboarding.
Thames Water
Apr 2022 — Sep 2022
Led the digital transformation of customer-facing services for a major UK water utility.
Smartstream Technologies
Apr 2021 — Apr 2022
Introduced Agile across five development teams. Drove Scrum adoption, improving delivery predictability and stakeholder transparency.
LR OneOcean
Feb 2020 — Aug 2021
Managed a portfolio of B2B/B2C maritime SaaS products. Led the ground-up rebuild of the flagship compliance platform and a major enterprise rollout.
MSC Cruises
Sep 2018 — Jan 2020
Shore-based fleet operations for 17 cruise ships. First responder for the MSC Opera Venice incident — coordinated the full emergency response across multiple stakeholders.
Princess Cruises
2007 — 2018
Progressed from Cadet to Senior 2nd Officer across 11 years. Responsible for the safety of 5,500 passengers on 330m vessels through extreme weather, emergencies, and complex navigation.
A product prioritisation tool supporting RICE, MoSCoW, and Value vs Effort frameworks. Built to scratch my own itch — demonstrates deep understanding of prioritisation methodology.
Automates laytime calculation from event data and clauses using natural language prompts. Solves a real maritime commercial pain point.
Generates TCE estimates from voyage inputs using LLMs, improving scenario analysis for commercial shipping decisions.
AI assistant for generating user stories based on product goals and constraints. A product tool, built by a product person.
The site you're looking at. Built with Next.js, Tailwind CSS, Motion, and strict TDD.
New message
Open to senior product leadership opportunities.
Based in Sherborne, Dorset, UK — happy to work remotely.
james@jamesslaw.co.uk