Principal Product Manager in City of London

Hippo is a rapidly growing digital consultancy passionate about building and delivering transformative digital solutions for a diverse range of Public and Private sector clients. We are recruiting for a Principal Product Management Consultant to support our mission. We work at the intersection of strategy, design, and technology to solve complex problems and create lasting value. Our collaborative and agile culture empowers our teams to make a genuine impact.

As a Principal Product Management Consultant, you will be a strategic product leader and an experienced practitioner. Your scope extends beyond individual products or delivery teams; you will be responsible for shaping product vision, defining product standards, and driving the successful delivery of valuable, user‑centred outcomes at scale. You will lead complex product environments, influence organisational strategy, and ensure product thinking is embedded across technology, delivery, and design disciplines. You will mentor and guide senior product practitioners, contribute to the development of our product capability, and act as a visible leader within both Hippo and our client organisations. As a Principal, you will play a key role in strengthening our product proposition, supporting business growth, and influencing senior stakeholders at executive level. You will bring clarity to complex problems, align teams around outcomes, and drive product direction in high‑impact, influential environments.

Your Role in a Nutshell

• Define and communicate compelling product visions that align organisational strategy with measurable user and business outcomes, ensuring clear direction across complex delivery environments.
• Lead the most complex and strategically important product engagements, connecting vision to delivery through clear objectives, prioritisation, and outcome‑driven roadmaps.
• Act as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders, including executive leadership, using data and insight to influence decision‑making and shape long‑term product and service strategy.
• Drive delivery excellence across multiple initiatives simultaneously, managing dependencies, reducing risk, and adapting agile approaches to suit context and complexity.
• Lead and mentor senior product practitioners, strengthening capability within Hippo’s Product community and fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
• Support business growth through pre‑sales activity, shaping product propositions, contributing to bids, and helping clients understand the value of product‑led delivery.
• Represent Hippo’s product capability internally and externally, contributing to thought leadership, community engagement, and the ongoing evolution of our product practice.

About the Candidate

Essential Experience

• Proven ability to lead and mentor product managers, building team capability and supporting long‑term growth.
• Significant hands‑on product experience, spanning product ownership and product management in complex delivery environments.
• Skill in defining and communicating clear product visions and strategies, aligning goals with outcome‑focused roadmaps.
• Ability to lead complex product deliveries end‑to‑end, from discovery through to live operation, ensuring continuous value delivery.
• Expertise in identifying, measuring and communicating value, linking outcomes to vision and user needs, and using evidence for product decisions.
• Confidence operating in technical environments, translating complex concepts into clear product direction that delivers measurable outcomes.
• Skill in engaging effectively with clients and stakeholders in a consultancy or advisory capacity, building trust while providing appropriate challenge.
• Expertise in balancing client needs, organisational objectives, and user outcomes, making sound decisions in complex or ambiguous situations.
• Capacity to adapt quickly across projects and domains, bringing structure and clarity to early‑stage or uncertain environments.
• Proven ability to lead and influence multiple product managers and multidisciplinary teams, creating alignment and shared purpose.
• Skill in developing capability in others, enabling autonomy and empowering teams to make effective product decisions.
• Experience working effectively within cross‑functional teams using user‑centred design approaches throughout the product lifecycle.
• Experience delivering in public sector (GDS service phases) or equivalent experience at scale in complex private sector organisations.
• Confidence operating within large and complex organisations, navigating governance, constraints, and competing priorities.
• Ability to manage multiple workstreams and dependencies while maintaining clarity of direction and delivery focus.
• Skill in applying Agile principles pragmatically (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, DevOps).

About The Company

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 under‑represented 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.

Hi, we’re Hippo. At Hippo, we design with empathy and build for impact. We do this by combining data‑informed evidence, human‑centred design and software engineering. We are a digital services partner who is genuinely invested in helping our clients thrive as modern organisations. Our delivery methodology is truly agile, from concept to reality, supporting innovation and continuous improvement to achieve your desired outcomes. We firmly believe that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. We take a human‑centred approach to everything we do because we understand that complex problems require a service design approach. This means understanding how users behave and ensuring our solutions work for them in the real world.

Our combination of data, design, and engineering delivers bespoke digital services that make a positive and meaningful impact on organisations and society. We’re confident in our abilities, authentic in our approach, and passionate about what we do. If you’re looking for a digital services partner that can deliver real results, let us help you build for the future and make a lasting impact.

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.