Platform Owner

At Nationwide, the CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery) Platform Team are responsible for delivering the automation pipelines that enable efficient and secure software delivery for our engineering teams. The team integrates and supports the full range of CI/CD tools, platforms and orchestrations, using DevOps frameworks, automation techniques and associated controls to continually improve our CI/CD product offering.

We work with a Product mindset, designing, operating, and improving the CI/CD platform with the needs of our engineering community at the centre. We have an exciting opportunity for a Product Owner to join our CI/CD Platform team. This role will be pivotal in shaping, prioritising and delivering the CI/CD product roadmap, ensuring our platform capabilities meet the needs of engineering teams across the Society while aligning to our regulatory, security and operational guardrails.

Working under the oversight of the Lead Product Owner, the successful candidate will bring strong hands-on Product Ownership experience in an Agile environment, a technical mindset suited to infrastructure and DevOps platforms, and the ability to collaborate with and influence senior stakeholders across Technology, Security, Operations and the wider CIO community. You will play a key role in translating business and engineering needs into clear, prioritised backlogs that enable our delivery teams to deliver high-quality outcomes.

We are happy to consider flexible working approaches to help you perform at your best. At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected. For this job you'll be located at our nearest regional hub. There will be a need to regularly connect with colleagues for collaboration events in one of our office sites. This is anticipated to be once monthly in Swindon or London.

If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. Nationwide is committed to the redeployment of our employees impacted by change, as such applications for redeployment candidates will be prioritised in this recruitment process.

The extras you’ll get include:

• Access to private medical insurance
• A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement
• Access to an annual performance related bonus
• Training and development to help you progress your career
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death
• Wellhub – access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year

As a mutual, we’re owned by our members - those customers who bank, save or have a mortgage with us. We challenge the financial sector status quo. We don’t see customers as the engine of our own profit. We share our profits with them and put their needs first. Always there when they need us. Supporting them and their lives.

If you’re inspired by fairer finances, passionate about making a meaningful impact, and truly care about our customers, you’re one of us. At Nationwide, you are challenged to grow and rewarded for doing so. Valued. Recognised. Inspired to be your best. As a community we want our working lives to count. As a team, we celebrate what we achieve. As a standard-setter, we work for the good of customers, communities, and broader society. We are purpose-driven. Uncompromisingly customer. Unstoppably Nationwide.

A key priority for this role is to own and shape the CI/CD platform backlog and roadmap, working closely with engineering teams and stakeholders across the organisation to ensure we are delivering the right capabilities at the right time. You will work collaboratively with Platform Engineers, Delivery Managers, Architects, Security and Operations teams to define clear outcomes, translate demand into high-quality epics and user stories, and ensure work is well-prioritised and ready for delivery.

You will act as the primary point of clarity for “what” needs to be delivered, enabling delivery teams to determine “how” best to deliver it. With your experience of DevOps automation and infrastructure-centric platforms, you’ll take an active interest in how solutions are implemented, ensuring they are scalable, secure, and aligned to both business needs and regulatory requirements.

You will also build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, managing expectations through transparent roadmaps, progress updates and demos. You’ll be expected to work with a proactive mindset, identifying risks, dependencies and opportunities early, and continuously improving how the team plans, delivers and measures success.

In the day-to-day of the role, you will act as Product Owner for CI/CD platform capabilities, contributing to business outcomes and roadmap definition. You’ll define, maintain and prioritise the product backlog, encompassing epics, features, user stories, defects and technical debt. You’ll ensure the backlog is ready for iteration planning, acting as the subject matter expert on priority, scope and acceptance criteria.

You will work closely with stakeholders and technical teams to plan roadmaps, run refinement and sprint planning sessions, support estimation, accept delivered work, and participate in demos and retrospectives. You’ll regularly need to translate complex business, regulatory and technical requirements into clear, high-quality user stories and acceptance criteria, along with managing and publishing product roadmaps, ensuring stakeholders are informed and expectations are well managed.

You’ll coordinate dependencies across product lines and partner with the wider product management team and provide thought leadership on how CI/CD capabilities and features should be implemented across the Society. You’ll have to manage multiple releases concurrently while maintaining a strong focus on quality and value delivery while building and sustaining strong relationships with engineering, governance, security, operations and external partner teams.

You’ll need to confidently communicate progress, risks and outcomes to senior stakeholders, providing constructive challenge where needed and proactively identifying risks and opportunities, unpicking complex problems, and working with teams to implement effective solutions.

As a minimum requirement you’ll have:

• Strong hands-on Product Ownership experience in an Agile / Scrum environment
• Proven experience working closely with technical teams to define backlogs, running refinement and planning sessions, and accepting delivery outputs
• A strong technical mindset, with experience working on infrastructure, platform or DevOps-related products
• Experience working with Cloud and DevOps automation teams and services along with the ability to articulate the value and benefits of DevOps and platform capabilities to non-technical stakeholders
• Experience building B2B products consumed by other technical teams
• Experience working in a regulated or highly controlled environment, ideally financial services
• Strong stakeholder management skills, including the ability to advise, influence and set expectations at senior levels along with outstanding communication, presentation and collaboration skills
• Strong analytical skills, attention to detail, and the ability to break down large, complex problems

Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviours that every colleague needs to display, in every role:

• Feel what customers feel - We step into our customers’ shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind
• Say it straight - We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think – we’re honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand
• Push for better - We don’t settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development
• Get it done - We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes

You can strengthen your application by showing how our customer first behaviours resonate with you, and where you may have already demonstrated these.