Product Owner

My client is a well-known finance institution with an exceptional reputation for their mission of redefining the financial industry. Manchester city centre offices - Hybrid working, 3 days a week in the office, non-negotiable.

The Role: Digital Product Owner, ideally with financial services experience and a strong digital product owner background. As a Digital Product Owner, you’ll research and determine the business’s needs to create an end-to-end digital customer journey for customer products. You’ll be the primary contact between business stakeholders and development teams and will drive forward the development of the digital customer journey product using agile methodologies. You will gather and document requirements to present the vision and roadmap to deliver the objectives and will act as the voice of the customer throughout the Software development lifecycle (SDLC) process. Working with cross functional teams, you will determine the path of which features to include and will pitch ideas for product features to stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborating with users and clients to understand and anticipate their needs and translate them into product requirements.
• Defining the vision for the Group’s product.
• Creating a product road map based on this vision.
• Developing and documenting user stories and user story maps.
• Lead design workshops to solutionise business requirements.
• Manage the product backlog and continuously prioritise backlog items due to changing requirements.
• Oversee all stages of product development.
• Deliver demonstrations of the product increment and lead sprint review sessions to gather feedback on the features developed.
• Monitoring and evaluating product progress at each stage of the development process.
• Liaising with the product team and end-users to deliver updates.
• Participating in Scrum meetings and product sprints, acting as voice of the customer throughout the SDLC.
• Clearly define product requirements and work closely with UI/UX team to ensure the product UI/UX is aligned to the product goals.
• Understand product domains and explain complex issues clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Write thorough UAT scripts to validate product features against business/customer requirements.
• Lead the UAT process, manage feedback from the business customers/users until the feature is confirmed to meet the acceptance criteria.
• Manage expectations of senior management, demonstrating product progress and incremental features on a regular basis.
• Support the implementation of the product and its features for clients and business users.
• Effectively communicate the value/benefit of new product features to business users and clients.
• Oversee the delivery of new product features and ensure any feedback is considered, reviewed and a decision made on whether it should be added to the product backlog.
• Researching competition and products in the marketplace.
• Support senior management in evaluating existing products and forming strategies to select/develop new or update existing products.
• To undertake other duties of an appropriate nature in consultation with line manager.

Qualifications (minimum)

• Previously lead and managed the implementation of an online customer application and members area from inception to delivery.
• 3+ years’ experience in a product owner role or taking a leading role in software development projects in a customer facing capacity.

Qualifications (additional)

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to talk to and present to a range of audiences, sometimes acting as a translator between technical and non-technical parties.
• Experience working with agile methodologies.
• Excellent analytical skills and an informed, evidence based approach.
• The ability to work under pressure on multiple projects/products within your project timeframes.
• The ability to motivate others and lead change.
• A passion for creating solutions with a positive attitude to change.
• A strong interest in business and business development.
• A good understanding and grasp of information technology.
• Experience dealing with senior stakeholders.
• Ability to demonstrate an understanding of the role of a product owner.
• Excellent at documenting requirement specifications/development sprint tickets and producing timelines and supporting documentation to senior business leaders.
• Leading daily standups, 3 Amigo sessions and Scrums.
• Excellent competency in using Microsoft products i.e. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, MS Projects.

Desirable

• Certified Product Owner certification.
• Experience working in an Agile environment.
• Financial (Mortgage/Loans) sector experience.
• Qualified Scrum Master.
• Experience using tools such as JIRA, DEVOPS, Bizagi/MS Visio, SLACK, and Google Apps.
• Experience using tools such as Balsamiq, Figma, Miro to draft UX/UI and mock ups.
• Educated to degree level or equivalent professional qualification.

Here’s what you’ll get back:

• Up to 25 days’ annual leave + Bank Holidays.
• Your birthday off, every year!
• A healthcare cash plan.
• A contributory pensions scheme, matched up to 5%.
• Long Service Awards.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Life Assurance.

Ascent People is acting as an employment agency for this vacancy, and applicants from all ages and backgrounds will be considered.