Platform Owner - DXP Operations

Jisc Grade: TGE3

Salary: from £47,000 to £55,000 per annum negotiable depending on experience

Hours: 35 hours per week

Contract: Permanent

Reports into: Head of DXP Operations

Location: Hybrid - A blend of working from home and your nominated hub office, we have hubs in London, Bristol, Manchester and Oxford. Specific patterns for working in the office are not mandated, and the frequency of time worked in the office is agreed with your manager. Meeting in person is something we value so you may need to travel on occasion to any of our hub offices.

About Jisc: Our vision is to lead the UK tertiary education, research and innovation sectors to be pioneers in the use of digital technology and data. We’re on a mission to harness the power of technology and data, to transform how knowledge is shared, applied and enhanced.

About the team: Jisc operates as a number of directorates, each focusing on particular activities. This role is within the Group CTO directorate. We develop new products to meet the needs of our members now and in the future, and provide technology leadership within the organisation and to our members and customers. Most of Jisc's technical resource and capability sits within our directorate, allowing us to focus on delivering Jisc's digital vision for members and customers. There are a number of departments which make up the Group CTO directorate, and this role is within Workplace IT, in the DXP Operations team. This team is responsible for the development and maintenance of the DXP Platform to support our customer facing activities.

About the role: As Platform Owner in DXP operations, your key objectives are to:

• Create, maintain and communicate a clear vision for all aspects of the Platform(s) service to stakeholders, ensuring alignment of needs through to strategy.
• Ensure successful delivery of changes to the Platform(s) both in terms of quality and value.
• Play a critical strategic role in the success of the platform which underpins the delivery of great customer experiences.
• Be accountable for the successful delivery of outputs, developing our central architecture, owning the product backlog and managing stakeholders.
• Lead in a matrix environment, influencing your stakeholders across the organisation to drive strategic change.
• Work closely with product owners and managers to ensure the successful delivery of a programme of work that will transform how Jisc operates internally and how it delivers products and services to our community.
• Develop and continuously improve the right governance around 'platform as a service' (PaaS) in order to deliver changes successfully, managing the platform steering group and governance surrounding decision making.
• Full ownership of operational metrics and co-own platform metrics with the Platform Reliability and Release Manager/Engineer, working closely with the Product Managers/Service Owners to support measurement of benefits.

Responsibilities will include:

• Stakeholder Management: Work with a wide range of stakeholders to develop roadmaps, bring people on a journey and a shared vision including, senior stakeholders, technical agile teams, product managers, architects and customers.
• Data Quality: Responsible for helping Jisc improve data quality and data governance challenges across the business, highlighting and fixing data quality issues where appropriate.
• Information Security: Audit and Data Governance functions to ensure the ongoing and documented operational integrity, data quality and availability within operations.
• Advocacy: Be a trusted advisor to the Jisc product management community and partners, demonstrating the business value of the platform and mapping technical solutions to business value, ensuring customers understand the real-world benefits of the platform.
• Platform Operations: Own, maintain and make visible a prioritised backlog for each product, gathering and understanding backlog items, refining, and adding detail for top priorities to provide clarity to the product development team and prioritise the features/enhancements/increments that will achieve the best value for the customer; defining user stories and/or features and functionality.
• Continuous Improvement: ITIL V4 Service Value System (SVS) cornerstone. Drive continuous improvement and anticipate changes in customer need, adapt and create transitioning plans. Work with internal stakeholders to agree consistent product documentation and processes across the directorate product portfolio.
• Strategy: Ensuring the platform technical strategy is adopted to reduce technical debt, support benefits realisation and promote longevity of the platform.
• Relationships and Partnering: Collaborate with stakeholders at all levels within the organisation as well as third party suppliers to ensure new features are prioritised and developed to best meet needs, develop roadmaps and KPIs.
• Product Management: Develop good technical understanding of key applications as “products”, along with the technology that underpins them in order to know its capabilities and know what is feasible, to enable optimised prioritisation of and detail within the product backlog. Conduct technical discovery and qualification, making architectural recommendations, and delivering product demonstrations and Proof of Concepts (PoCs).
• Ownership: Take ownership of live product bugs, prioritising the resolution of these against other work. Keeping up to date with comparable products and experiences to help ensure Jisc’s products are providing leading user experiences.
• Accountable: Be accountable for the delivery of high value products, and for optimising the value of the work of the delivery teams.
• Quality: Develop detailed and high-quality statements of requirements, distributed and understandable to both technical/non-technical stakeholders. Promote quality over velocity in the delivery of capability, minimising re-work, defects and vulnerabilities.

Key Skills and Experience:

• Leadership in Product & Platform Development: Proven experience leading product management or platform development across an organisation—defining value-driven requirements and aligning delivery with product teams.
• Agile & Backlog Expertise: Hands-on experience managing backlogs and working within Agile teams or organisations.
• Tech-Savvy & Tool Fluent: Comfortable using tools like SharePoint, Teams, Jira, Confluence, Visio, and Planner to support team operations. Experience with Salesforce is essential; Mulesoft and Copado are a bonus.
• Change & Stakeholder Management: Skilled in managing the impact of change initiatives, engaging stakeholders, and resolving conflicts around requirements or outcomes.
• Deliverables-Driven: Demonstrated ability to deliver key outputs and balance project work with operational responsibilities.
• Strategic Thinking: Familiar with stakeholder mapping techniques (RACI knowledge is a plus) and experienced in applying ITIL principles across change management, service delivery, or product management.
• Security & Privacy by Design: A strong advocate for embedding security and privacy from the outset in all work.

Qualifications: Holds a relevant degree, vocational or professional qualification—or equivalent experience in HR or a related field.

We know that sometimes people can be put off applying for a job if they think they can’t tick every box, so we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet 100% of the requirements, but you feel this role is perfect for you. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles!

Why work for us? At Jisc, every role is vital, and every person matters. We want you to feel like you’re part of something bigger. We support learning throughout your career and offer chances to grow, develop new skills, and make a real difference in education and research. We believe that balancing your personal and professional life is key to happiness and fulfilment. We embrace flexible working, focusing on results rather than hours spent at a desk. It's not about where you work, but how you create a flow that energizes both your work and home life.

Take a look at our fantastic benefits! We offer:

• Flexible work pattern, which can adapt to suit your schedules and personal commitments
• 31 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) that includes three closure days over Christmas plus the opportunity to buy up to an additional 5 days leave during the flexible benefits window
• A comprehensive 24/7 mental health support package, including coaching and appropriate counselling or specialist therapy, with no predetermined limit on the number of sessions you can access
• Annual Jisc performance award
• A range of wellbeing lifestyle benefits including company paid health care cash plan, mental health first aiders and support
• A company culture of continuous learning with access to thousands of LinkedIn Learning courses, and lots of resources and opportunities to support your development
• Allocated allowance of up to £250 to equip your home office
• Financial well-being support including access to preferential loan and savings plans, mortgage advice, will writing tools and support and resources to help you make the most of your money
• The opportunity to donate to charity tax-free with our Payroll Giving benefit
• Salary sacrifice - Electric Car Lease Scheme, Cycle to work and SmartTech (buy the latest technology and white goods products, spreading the cost over up to twelve months, direct from your salary and interest-free) subject to terms and conditions and available upon request
• A wide range of discounts and cashback from retailers and big-name high-street stores
• Family friendly policies including enhanced parental, maternity and paternity and co-parental leave as well as opportunity for career breaks
• Support your volunteering with up to 3 days volunteer leave
• Specsavers corporate eye care scheme including free eye test vouchers and up to £70 towards new glasses for VDU use
• Life assurance cover

Equity, diversity and inclusion: Jisc believe our people make all the difference in cultivating an inclusive culture that welcomes ideas, encourages innovation, and values belonging. We work hard to create an equitable experience for our candidates and workforce which embraces all aspects of their identity including race and ethnicity, religion and belief, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, trans identities, age, class, disability, neurodivergence, or veteran status.

Application process: Please let us know how we can best accommodate you throughout the recruitment process. We’re committed to making our process accessible and comfortable for everyone - just tell us what works best for you. Just so you know, we review CVs as soon as we can and aim to provide an update on your application within 4 weeks of receiving it. However, you may hear from us a lot sooner, so please keep an eye out for our emails or calls! We’re really looking forward to getting to know the real you.

While we encourage the use of AI tools to help you get started on your CV or cover letter, we encourage you to review your application before submitting. Make sure it truly reflects your own voice, experiences, and personality.

If you are currently a Jisc employee, please apply through your Dayforce Employee profile. We have a thorough background screening process that verifies the details you share with us in your CV and your application. Any inaccurate information supplied during the application stages can lead to a job offer being withdrawn.

Sponsorship: Jisc has an active sponsor licence to recruit on a Skilled worker visa basis. Candidates wishing to apply who require sponsorship should determine the likelihood of obtaining a Certificate of Sponsorship for the role by assessing their circumstances against the relevant Home Office criteria. Jisc does not offer any financial re-imbursement towards the applicant costs, such as re-location, skilled worker visa and dependant costs or the immigration health charge.