Product Owner

About Kinetic

At Kinetic we’re redefining operational excellence in higher education, conferencing, and events. As the leading provider of software solutions for student accommodation, event management, catering, and residential services, we help institutions streamline operations, elevate customer experiences, and unlock their full potential. With over 25 years of experience and trusted by more than 350 institutions worldwide, our software empowers universities and venues to run smarter, faster, and more collaboratively. From bustling campuses to dynamic corporate environments, our technology adapts to the rhythm of each organisation — helping them thrive in a fast‑changing world. But we’re more than just software. We’re a team of passionate problem‑solvers, innovators, and collaborators who care deeply about our customers and each other. Our culture is built on empowerment, community, and continuous growth. We believe in giving people the tools, support, and freedom to do their best work — and have fun while doing it. Joining Kinetic means being part of a purpose‑driven business where your ideas matter, your development is supported, and your impact is real. If you’re ready to help shape the future of operational technology in education and events, we’d love to meet you.

The Role

Product Owners at Kinetic do more than manage a backlog. You will own the engineering delivery process: writing stories, running sprints, and shipping software. But you will also be expected to understand your domain, know your customers, and have a clear view of where your product needs to go. You will make prioritisation decisions that affect revenue, shape product direction through customer discovery, and represent your product area across the business. We are a team that is actively building its operating model. We are putting discovery processes in place, standardising how we estimate and refine work, formalising go‑to‑market, and improving delivery predictability. We expect you to use AI as part of your daily workflow, whether that is writing user stories, synthesising customer research, analysing competitors, or drafting communications. You will not inherit a finished playbook. You will help write it.

Product Vision and Direction: Develop and maintain a clear view of where your product area is heading. Understand the competitive landscape, what customers need, and the strategic priorities that should guide what gets built. When AI‑augmented engineering means we can build faster than ever, the critical skill is knowing what to build and what to leave alone.

Customer Discovery and Advocacy: Get out of the building. Conduct site visits, run customer interviews, and lead co‑design sessions. Bring real evidence into prioritisation decisions. Be the person who can explain why something matters, not just describe what it does.

Domain Expertise: Build deep knowledge of your product domain, whether that is student accommodation, conferencing and events, catering, or student systems. Understand how universities operate, what their cycles look like, and how your product fits into their day‑to‑day.

Backlog Ownership and Delivery: Own the product backlog. Write clear user stories with solid acceptance criteria. Run refinement, manage sprint cycles, and deliver predictably against quarterly commitments. Build toward being able to forecast delivery 6 to 12 weeks ahead with confidence.

Stakeholder Management: Manage expectations across engineering, commercial, customer services, support, and leadership. Protect engineering from unplanned interruptions. Saying "not now" with evidence is just as important as saying yes, and keeping the relationship intact while doing it is essential.

Quality and Technical Health: Bugs, technical debt, and platform stability are product problems, not just engineering problems. Own the triage process, make the case for quality investment alongside feature delivery, and work to reduce cycle time and improve how QA integrates with your squad.

Go-to-Market: Own the go‑to‑market process for your product area. Prepare customer communications, commercial positioning, internal briefings, and support documentation ahead of launches. Make sure every department is ready when software ships, and hold them to account for their part.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Discovery and Strategy: Visit customers on site (3 to 4 times a year for your product area) and run co‑design sessions to validate priorities. Build direct relationships with key customers. Use AI tools to synthesise support ticket data, usage patterns, and competitive intelligence into clear product direction. Run hypothesis‑driven discovery before committing engineering effort to major initiatives. Define adoption metrics and track whether shipped features are actually delivering value.
• Delivery and Execution: Own and maintain a prioritised product backlog based on business value, customer impact, and strategic alignment. Write user stories with clear acceptance criteria, using AI to draft and improve quality, and work with engineers through refinement and estimation. Run 2‑week sprint cycles, protect committed work from scope creep, and drive delivery predictability. Triage and prioritise bugs alongside feature work. Manage cross‑product dependencies, especially across the Delphi estate where shared databases and code libraries mean a change in one product can affect others. Participate in product governance, including the fortnightly Product Review Board. Forecast delivery 6 to 12 weeks ahead and track accuracy over time.
• Communication and Enablement: Submit weekly delivery reports covering progress, risks, and RAG status. Put together go‑to‑market packs for launches: customer communications, positioning, internal briefings, and support docs. Brief customer services, support and sales ahead of launches and significant updates. Represent your product area in cross‑functional discussions and present to leadership. Make sure other departments deliver on their part of a launch.

Core Experience

• 3+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, or in a combined role within a SaaS or software product company.
• Backlog ownership in an agile delivery team, whether Scrum, Kanban, or something similar.
• Customer discovery. You have actually spoken to customers. Interviews, site visits, usability testing, co‑design sessions. Not just gathering requirements from internal teams.
• Prioritisation under pressure. You can hold the tension between fixing bugs and building features, between what a stakeholder wants and what the strategy needs, between short‑term revenue and long‑term platform health.
• Clear communication. You can explain product decisions and trade‑offs to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Saying no. You have done it, with evidence, and the relationship survived. This matters here because multiple departments will compete for your time and attention.
• Comfortable with legacy systems. Not everything is greenfield. You need to be willing to invest in stability and quality on mature platforms. Our Delphi products still underpin a significant share of our revenue.
• Technically literate. You do not need to write code, but you need to understand how software gets built, what technical debt actually means, and how to have useful conversations with engineers about what is feasible.
• Process discipline. You are comfortable setting up and following structured ways of working: estimation, refinement, sprint cadence, release cycles. You will be building some of these processes here, not just following ones that already exist.
• AI mindset. You already use AI tools in your product work. Whether that is drafting stories, pulling together research, analysing competitors, or synthesising customer feedback, you see AI as something you use every day, not something you are curious about trying. We are an AI‑first business and this is a baseline expectation.

Nice to Have

• Experience in higher education, student accommodation, conferencing and events, or hospitality technology.
• Experience managing third‑party development or outsourced delivery.
• Multi‑product portfolio management. Product Owners here typically look after 2 to 5 products.
• Go‑to‑market experience: customer communications, launch planning, positioning, support enablement.
• Product analytics and adoption measurement. Knowing whether something worked, not just whether it shipped.
• Jira proficiency.
• Experience working within formal governance frameworks like Product Review Boards or architecture review.
• Experience with delivery forecasting and predictability metrics.

What Makes You Stand Out

Candidates who can show hands‑on experience with tools like Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot across their product management work will stand out. We want people who are already using AI for discovery, story writing, research, competitor analysis, and communications. Not people who are planning to start.

How We Work

Your portfolio. You will look after 2 to 5 products across different technology stacks, from legacy Delphi desktop applications to the modern AWS cloud platform. The Delphi products share databases, code libraries, and release coordination, so understanding cross‑product dependencies is part of the job.

Your team. You will join a product team of around five Product Owners, reporting to the Head of Product. You will work alongside engineering squads, QA, and incoming UX and design resource.

Governance. Prioritisation runs through a fortnightly Product Review Board. Decisions are binding, rationale is published, and every "no" gets a written explanation. Sprint commitments are protected. No mid‑sprint disruptions.

AI‑first tooling. We use Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot across the product and engineering lifecycle. Product Owners use AI daily for story writing, research, synthesis, competitor analysis, and communications. This is how we work, not a side project.

Where we are. We are building our operating model right now. Discovery processes, estimation standards, go‑to‑market practices, delivery predictability. You will not walk into a finished system. You will help shape it. If that sounds like the kind of challenge you want, this is the right role.

Benefits & Perks

At Kinetic, we believe work should come with rewards that make a real difference. Here’s just a taste of what you can expect when you join us:

• 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) - with extra days the longer you’re with us.
• Two paid wellbeing days each year, with a budget to enjoy some time out with someone important to you.
• Enhanced pension contributions to support your future.
• Two paid days a year to give back through volunteering, charity work, or sustainability projects with our Green Team.
• Salary sacrifice schemes for electric vehicles and cycle‑to‑work.
• 24/7 access to our Employee Assistance Programme for confidential advice and support.
• A full annual health check to keep you at your best.
• A flexible benefits platform - from life assurance and learning opportunities to retail discounts and cinema tickets.
• A genuine people‑first culture where your growth and wellbeing come first.
• Performance‑related bonus scheme to reward your contribution.
• Regular socials - from team get‑togethers to all‑company celebrations, with each department owning a budget for their events.
• The opportunity to attend group conferences, away days and learning forums both in the UK and abroad - network with other talent.

We’ve created a welcoming office environment, with well‑stocked kitchens offering free breakfast, fresh fruit, hot and cold drinks, and a range of tuck‑shop goodies to keep you fuelled throughout the day. Kinetic is an equal opportunity employer, fostering diversity and committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.