Product Owner – GovTech Delivery & Backlog Lead

About ePassePass is Scotland's most ambitious GovTech scaleup, originally born out of CivTech Scotland, now growing its digital licensing platform across public sector markets. We provide reusable digital infrastructure for licensing, permitting and registration services. These services are often complex, policy-driven and operationally fragmented, affecting citizens, businesses, local authorities, regulators and central government.

As our delivery capability grows, we are looking for a Product Owner who can keep that delivery grounded, moving and well-organised. Someone who is close to the backlog, close to engineering, and close enough to clients and users to make good product decisions daily.

You’ll be joining a focused team of AI enthusiasts, product evangelists, senior engineering talent, political strategists, and go to market specialists, in an organisation that is looking to make massive positive impact on the world.

The role is an operational product ownership role. You will own the day-to-day running of the backlog, keep delivery moving, and make sure the engineering team always has clear, well-defined work in front of them. You will sit inside the delivery team, attend standups, run refinement sessions, write stories, resolve blockers and make the decisions that keep sprints on track. You will be the person engineering turns to when something is unclear, and the person who ensures that what gets built reflects what users and clients need.

The role sits at the intersection of service design, engineering and client delivery. You will work closely with our CTO to shape and prioritise the backlog. You will work closely with the engineering team to ensure those items are well-scoped, understood and deliverable.

What you will do:

• Own product delivery operations across ePass client engagements, particularly around licensing, permitting and registration services.
• Own and maintain the product backlog: groomed, prioritised and ready for delivery at all times.
• Write and refine user stories with clear, testable acceptance criteria.
• Run and facilitate backlog refinement, sprint planning and sprint review sessions.
• Work with engineering daily to clarify requirements, unblock delivery and support sprint execution.
• Triage incoming requests from clients and internal teams and translate them into well-defined backlog items.
• Work with service designers and user researchers to ensure delivery is grounded in user needs and service evidence.
• Distinguish between product configuration choices, service design issues, policy constraints and engineering decisions.
• Manage and communicate sprint progress clearly to the wider team and to clients.
• Support testing and acceptance of completed work before release.
• Flag risks, dependencies and scope creep early and clearly.

What we are looking for:

• A reliable, organised and delivery-focused product owner who can keep a team moving without losing sight of what matters.
• Proven experience owning a backlog in an active agile delivery team.
• The ability to write clear, well-scoped user stories that engineers can act on without ambiguity.
• Strong facilitation skills for refinement, planning and review ceremonies.
• Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical colleagues and clients.
• An organised, dependable working style, things don't fall through the gaps.
• The ability to work across product, service design, engineering and client teams without losing focus on delivery.

Experience with Scottish Government, local government, UK public services, regulated services, GovTech delivery or digital licensing and permitting would be particularly valuable.

Join an impact led, highly driven organisation with benefits including:

• Company pension scheme.
• Enhanced maternity / paternity leave.
• Hybrid working (2 days per week in Edinburgh office).
• Company meetups and fun culture.
• Highly collaborative and supportive work environment.
• Professional development and training opportunities.
• 30 days of annual leave, plus your birthday off!

This is an opportunity to shape product ownership capability inside a growing and innovative Scottish GovTech company. ePass is working on practical public services where licensing, permitting and registration affect citizens, businesses, public bodies and frontline operations. The work is complex, meaningful and close to real public service delivery.

For a Product Owner who wants to work close to users, stakeholders and delivery teams, this role offers a serious opportunity to influence how public services are understood, shaped and improved.