Technical Product Owner

The Hiscox UK Product Owner Chapter forms the bridge between the business and the technology teams, ensuring that technology change is prioritised, defined, broken down and delivered in a way that enables the business to achieve its strategic goals, whilst also enabling the technology strategy. This means understanding the end-to-end context of the change and having a laser‑focus on value so that we can ensure both that we're doing the right things and doing the things right.

The Technical Product Owner is a key role that sits within the Hiscox UK Retail IT team and is focused on delivering value across designated value streams and initiatives by aligning products and solutions to customer and stakeholder needs. As the key interface between the business, technology, 3rd parties, partners and customer experience, you will be responsible for translating strategic objectives into actionable product/service/technical initiatives that deliver business outcomes.

In this role you'll work with the Technical Product Manager, the Head of Digital and Integration Platforms and various Tech Leads/Solution Architects to contribute to a strategic roadmap, based on business strategy changes and the IT Technical Roadmap and to manage and prioritise the backlog to best deliver change. You’ll be someone who enjoys making things happen and considers stakeholder management one of your strengths, with the ability to effectively engage with both business and technical stakeholders.

You like to be an empowered decision maker, able to prioritise, and can quickly establish where time needs to be invested to drive business value, providing cost‑effective solutions to the business in line with the overarching strategy. The Product Owner is empowered to make decisions around priority, scope and requirements driving stakeholder engagement, ensuring they are clear on customer needs ensuring a continuous flow of value from the team.

What you’ll be doing:

• Work with the Technical Product Manager to define a clear product vision aligned with the strategic goals of the Technical Platform.
• Translate customer and stakeholder needs into a compelling product roadmap that delivers measurable outcomes.
• Engage with business stakeholders, customers, and technical teams to understand requirements and priorities.
• Act as the primary point of contact for the product/service within designated initiatives, facilitating clear communication between all parties.
• Contribute to the creation, refinement, and prioritisation of the product backlog to ensure alignment with both business and technical objectives.
• Define clear, actionable user stories and acceptance criteria to guide the development team.
• Be a key contributor to the prioritisation of incidents and other maintenance/health activities.
• Work closely with tech leads and development teams to ensure timely delivery of high‑quality solutions.
• Monitor and measure product performance, making data‑driven decisions to optimise value.
• Work closely with Partners and 3rd Parties in the secure integration and onboarding of APIs and technical services.
• Incorporate customer feedback into product improvements and innovation.
• Advocate for the end‑user experience in every decision, ensuring our products meet customer needs and expectations.
• Collaborate with other teams and change initiatives to identify synergies and dependencies.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement within the team and across Hiscox UK.

Our must haves:

• Proven experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, or similar role, ideally within insurance, financial services, or a comparable industry.
• Strong understanding of scaled agile models and their application in a business context.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence at all levels.
• Experience in B2B integration in secure regulated models with an emphasis on scalability, usability and maintainability.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving abilities, with a focus on delivering customer and business value.
• Proven experience of eliciting, documenting, and delivering high quality systems analysis artefacts to clearly articulate how the technology should work.
• Experience of translating business requirements into technical design, supported by development teams.
• Experience of system integration product changes in an analyst role.
• Experience of front end/back‑end testing to support development.
• The ability to combine influencing, persuasion and consultancy skills with qualities that will encourage stakeholders to positively respond to questions, enquiries, and requests to meet deadlines.
• Be highly results driven, with the energy and determination to succeed in a fast‑paced environment where the speed of response is critical to success.
• Confidence to organise and facilitate collaborative sessions, digging deeper on work when needed and actively seeking feedback.
• Understand the E2E Delivery & Release lifecycle and way of working and how it differs across applications.
• Experience working with third party software houses and/or technology providers and having a strong level of commercial awareness.
• Experience creating or updating API specifications (REST and SOAP).
• Use of online collaboration tools, Atlassian suite (JIRA/confluence), and advanced excel skills.

Our nice to haves:

• Financial services or insurance industry experience.
• Rudimentary understanding of Azure products and integration tools.

Key Competencies:

• Customer‑Centricity: A strong focus on understanding and addressing customer needs.
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to align product goals with the company's broader objectives.
• Collaboration: Proven ability to work effectively with cross‑functional teams.
• Adaptability: Comfort in a fast‑paced, dynamic environment with changing priorities.
• Leadership: Inspire and guide teams to deliver exceptional results.
• Finance and planning acumen: Forecasting, budgeting and cost benefit analysis.

About Hiscox UK:

Hiscox UK is a leading brand in the insurance market, recognised as setting the standards others try to emulate. We consistently deliver strong growth and exceptional returns, recruiting only the very best and empowering them to deliver. We are known for insuring the homes of the rich and famous through to the most innovative technology companies. Our customers are diverse and unique and are only united by our ability to provide specialist insurance tailored to their needs. At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the job and we’re committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. We also know that working life doesn’t always have to be in the office, and as long as it’s safe to do so, we will be operating a hybrid way of working to encourage a healthy work life balance, with 2 to 3 days in the office per week. Work with amazing people and be part of a unique culture.