Senior Product Manager | Consulting Leader, User-Centered in Leeds

Hippo is recruiting for Senior Product Managers to join our growing team. Product Managers ensure that our client's goals turn into actions. This means creating a compelling vision for your product, developing the product roadmap, writing user stories and actively managing them in a prioritised backlog. As a Senior Consultant, specialising in Product, you’ll already be an expert in your field, in agile and a confident coach. You’ll also be a leader of people and teams and an advocate for user‑centred design approaches. Hippo will provide exciting opportunities to share your expertise with, and influence, clients and team members and to continue to develop you as a leader.

Your role in a nutshell:

• Inspiring and guiding your colleagues by supporting them in understanding the client’s needs, explaining the broader context and getting buy‑in.
• Provide team leadership and protect your team from unwanted distraction where possible, allowing them to focus solely on delivery.
• Engage with stakeholders to create a project vision and translate into a roadmap & prioritised backlog.
• Communicating with an extremely diverse group of people, including experts in their field.
• Lead a diverse multidisciplinary team delivering work on behalf of one of our high profile clients.

Skills and experience that you need:

People are at the centre of everything we do. We’re a diverse and close‑knit community united by a love for solving complex problems for our clients and their users. We take a common sense approach to getting things done. We get things wrong, we learn from experience and we adapt. We stay curious and never stop learning. We don’t need you to have any certificates or qualifications, but we do need to be confident that you have the ability to:

• Lead a team of people that are specialists in their field.
• Identify and use evidence of value to drive decision‑making to ensure the user is at the heart of the team.
• Build consensus amongst people with different perspectives, with the confidence to make decisive decisions when consensus is not possible.
• Bridge the gap between stakeholders and the team so the team can remain focused on delivery.
• Find pragmatic and creative ways to balance constraints such as policy and security in order to prioritise work and meet user needs.
• Perform well in a wide variety of delivery disciplines (Scrum, Kanban).
• Communicate confidently and credibly on behalf of the company and the client.
• Lead workshops and group exercises, remotely and in‑person.
• Build product and user centric capabilities in others, helping colleagues and clients know what to do when you are not around.

What makes us great:

As well as a competitive salary which we’re transparent about from the outset, you can also expect a range of benefits:

• Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%).
• 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays.
• Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts.
• Critical illness cover.
• Life assurance and death in service cover.
• Volunteer days.
• Cycle‑to‑work scheme for the avid cyclists.
• Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme.
• Season ticket loans.
• Financial and general wellbeing sessions.
• Flexible benefits scheme with options of: private health cover, private dental cover, additional company pension contributions, additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days), wellbeing contribution, charity contributions, tree planting.

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Hippo:

At Hippo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that works for everyone. We understand that having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity and problem solving. Only by building a community of diverse perspectives, cultures and socio‑economic backgrounds can we create an environment where all can contribute and thrive. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups including women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and people with disabilities. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process that reflects our workplace culture. We are a registered Disability Confident Employer, Mindful Employer, Endometriosis Friendly Employer and a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. Hippo continually strives to remove barriers, provide accommodations and offer reasonable adjustments to ensure equity throughout our practices.

Hippo locations:

We are headquartered in Leeds and have offices across the UK in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol. We're on the lookout for top talent nationwide but you need to be located within reasonable travelling distance from one of our offices which will be your contracted office location. Given the dynamic nature of a consulting business, you may be required to work on‑site at a Hippo office or at an in/out of town client location for a number of days per week (client dependent) and therefore candidates will need to be open/flexible to travel. Plus, we offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8k (please ask for terms and conditions) to help make your move a smooth one.