Product Owner

Location: Hybrid, within reasonable commuting distance of London or Bristol. Ability to attend in-person meetings as required.

The Business Analyst / Product Owner plays a critical role in the successful delivery and ongoing performance of our clients' digital estates. Working within multidisciplinary project and programme teams and in close partnership with our clients, this role translates vision, user needs, and organisational goals into clear, prioritised, and actionable requirements. Always delivery-led, the role flexes depending on the engagement. In some contexts, the BA/PO acts as a proxy Product Owner for ongoing or retained work, owning the backlog and day-to-day prioritisation. In others, they work alongside client Product Owners, Digital Teams, and Technology leadership to shape, challenge and deliver solutions that balance immediate needs with long-term value. This role thrives in an agency environment managing multiple workstreams, navigating varying levels of digital maturity, and bringing clarity, structure and momentum to complex digital initiatives.

Reports to: Delivery Director (matrix relationship with Technology, Strategy and Design teams)

Responsibilities

• Delivery & Product Ownership

• Translate client vision, user needs and business objectives into clear, structured requirements, user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Own and manage product backlogs, ensuring items are prioritised to maximise value and aligned to agreed outcomes.
• Act as proxy Product Owner where required, providing continuity, pace and focus for client teams.
• Work closely with delivery teams to support sprint planning, refinement, reviews and retrospectives.
• Ensure requirements are well understood, testable and achievable within agreed constraints.

• Client & Stakeholder Collaboration

• Build strong, trusted relationships with client stakeholders, operating as a partner rather than a note-taker.
• Facilitate workshops and discovery sessions to uncover needs, assumptions and opportunities.
• Confidently challenge client thinking where appropriate, balancing ambition with pragmatism and sustainability.
• Support clients with varying levels of product and digital maturity, adapting approach as needed.

• User & Outcome Focus

• Champion a user-centred approach, ensuring decisions are grounded in user needs, data and evidence.
• Work with Strategists and Designers to define and track meaningful outcomes and success measures.
• Use insight from analytics and qualitative feedback to inform prioritisation and continuous improvement.

• Business Analysis & Problem Definition

• Work with clients and internal teams to clearly define problems before solutions are agreed.
• Analyse business needs, user needs, constraints, dependencies and risks to ensure work is well-founded.
• Surface assumptions and challenge incomplete or conflicting requirements early.
• Explore and articulate solution options, outlining trade-offs across value, cost, complexity and sustainability.
• Provide clear recommendations that support informed decision-making by clients and delivery teams.
• Maintain traceability between business objectives, user needs, requirements and delivered outcomes.
• Support effective change control by assessing the impact of new or evolving requirements.

• Ways of Working

• Apply Agile principles pragmatically, tailoring methods to suit the engagement and client context.
• Collaborate closely with Technology, Design, Strategy and Delivery colleagues to ensure joined-up thinking.
• Contribute to improving internal standards, tools and approaches for BA / PO practice across the agency.

Measures of Success

• Backlogs are clear, prioritised and trusted by delivery teams and clients.
• Teams have the clarity they need to deliver efficiently, with minimal rework or ambiguity.
• Clients feel supported, appropriately challenged, and confident in their decision-making.
• Delivered work demonstrably contributes to agreed outcomes, not just outputs.
• User needs are consistently represented in discussions and decisions.
• Work balances short-term delivery with long-term sustainability of digital platforms.

You are comfortable operating in an agency environment, where context-switching is normal, priorities evolve, and strong relationships matter as much as strong process.

Experience About You

• Experience working as a Business Analyst, Product Owner or similar role within a digital, technology or agency environment.
• Experience supporting the delivery of digital products, platforms or services across multiple clients or workstreams.
• Exposure to clients or organisations with early to mixed levels of digital maturity.
• Experience working in Agile or hybrid delivery environments.

Skills And Experience

• Strong requirements elicitation and documentation skills (user stories, acceptance criteria, epics, roadmaps).
• Backlog management and prioritisation, balancing value, effort and risk.
• Experience of running ceremonies.
• Workshop facilitation and stakeholder engagement.
• Ability to interpret web analytics and other insight sources to inform decisions.

Technical Skills

• Business analysis: Experience in identifying business needs, analysing problems, and recommending solutions to improve processes and services (As Is-To Be process mapping, User Stories, Story Pointing, Minimum Viable Product, MoSCoW prioritisation, Acceptance Criteria).
• Strong practical understanding and application of Agile methodologies, principles and tools.
• Experience of working with common digital platforms and ecosystems, including CMS-driven and headless architectures.
• Comfortable working with tools such as Jira, Figma, Miro and web analytics platforms.

Dimensions

• Budget: Operates within agreed project or programme budgets. Supports value-based decision-making and change discussions, with shared commercial accountability.
• Headcount: No direct line management initially; works within multi-disciplinary delivery teams. May mentor team members informally.
• Resource Complexity & Nature of Work: Multiple concurrent workstreams across different clients. Mix of project-based and ongoing product-style engagements. Varying technical complexity, including legacy platforms and evolving digital estates.
• Change Management: Medium level of change and stakeholder complexity. Supports clients through shifts in ways of working, priorities and expectations.

Interactions

• Internal: Delivery, Technology, Design, Strategy, Client Services - mixed levels.
• External: Client project teams and wider stakeholders.

Strategic Timeframe

• Operates both tactically sprint-to-sprint while contributing to roadmaps and plans spanning approximately 3-24 months.

About You

You are energised by solving multiple challenges at once and bringing order to complexity. You enjoy working closely with clients and teams, translating ambiguity into clarity without losing sight of the bigger picture. You care deeply about delivering value for users, for clients, and for the teams doing the work.

Behaviours and Personal Attributes

• User-focused: Always advocates for user needs and experience, even when under pressure.
• Outcome-driven: Focuses on delivering demonstrable value, not just completing tasks.
• Collaborative: Works in true partnership with clients and colleagues.
• Pragmatic: Balances ideal solutions with real-world constraints.
• Confident communicator: Able to challenge constructively and explain complex ideas clearly.
• Sustainable thinker: Avoids trading off tomorrow for today; considers long-term impact.
• Adaptable: Comfortable moving between contexts, clients and levels of complexity.

About Us

Manifesto: We are the digital experience agency for changemakers. We are committed to delivering purposeful and positive impact for people, planet and society, in restless pursuit of a better world. We take pride in creating award-winning digital experiences, products and services that are measurably ethical, inclusive, accessible, sustainable and joyful. Our changemaker clients include UNICEF UK, Breast Cancer Now, The Trussell Trust, Woodgreen, The Royal Academy of Arts, Zoological Society London, Historic Environment Scotland and Fauna & Flora. Part of the TPXimpact group - a Certified B Corporation, we are a team of 130 digital product leaders, creative designers, user experience designers, engagement specialists, software engineers and experience strategists. TPXimpact is a digital transformation company, and Certified B Corporation, on a mission to build a future where people, places and the planet are supported to thrive. Combining vast expertise in human-centred design, data, experience and technology, we help the public, private and third sectors with their digital transformation journey, delivering high quality solutions that improve services, experiences and outcomes. We are passionate people who work in close collaboration with our clients to create sustainable solutions ready for an ever-evolving world. We are committed to having a positive impact on the clients and the communities we serve. We actively encourage applications from all genders, ethnicities, disabled people, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Don’t meet 100% of the criteria? We still want to hear from you. Please let us know if you require any adjustments during the recruitment process.