Product Delivery Manager in Livingston

Founded in 2007, SchoolGrid is a small but rapidly growing provider of multi award winning cashless catering management and online payment software for many hundreds of schools across the UK. SchoolGrid has always been at the forefront of innovation in our industry, often first to market with unique, business enhancing features such as in-class ordering or front-of-house serving systems to maximise throughput whilst ensuring industry leading allergen protection for all children is built in across the board.

Although small in size we are a Company with big ideas and ambitious growth plans for this year and well beyond. You will be joining us at a very exciting time in the history of the Company as we look to scale significantly. We’ve grown our Engineering team by more than double in the last 12 months and there is also the opportunity to work internationally with teams based in Sri Lanka.

From an engineering perspective, we are now embarking on building our next generation platform that will serve our customers for the years ahead. The vision for our technology platform is built on best practice architectural and engineering principles and will be utilising modern, relevant technologies. If you’re looking for a role that provides ample opportunities to work on new and exciting projects which make a difference in the real world as well as working alongside talented engineers with great industry experience, then this role will appeal.

To support the business, the setup of the Engineering team has been structured to provide focus in 4 key pillars:

• Product Management - Works closely with the business and steering group around strategy, planning and analysis plus Roadmap Management
• Software Development - design, development, test and QA for the SchoolGrid product suite in line with the Product Backlog
• Data and Architecture - focused on building our architectural runway for the next generation of application architecture and data platform
• Operations - specialisms around ensuring our Azure platform management and monitoring is fit for purpose and also includes application support and performance efficiency

Role Description

The Product Delivery Manager owns the execution of the product backlog end to end, from the point a feature or change is scoped into user stories through to development, testing and release. This is fundamentally a delivery and pace role: the post holder drives the development team to execute at speed without compromising quality, holds the team to account for throughput against sprint commitments, and proactively removes blockers and escalates early wherever pace or quality is at risk.

Operating as the primary bridge between Product Management, Engineering and Design, the post holder translates strategic roadmaps and customer feedback into well-scoped, actionable execution plans, then owns backlog health, release execution and cross-team alignment to ensure high-quality software is delivered predictably and at pace.

We're looking for a driven, organised and delivery focused Product Delivery Manager to make sure our product roadmap actually gets shipped, at pace and to a high standard. This role is all about ownership: once a feature or change is scoped, you make it move, through user stories, development and release, quickly and without cutting corners on quality. You'll work closely with the development team, holding them to account for sprint commitments, removing blockers before they slow things down, and stepping in early wherever pace or quality starts to slip.

You’ll be working closely with the Engineering Manager, Squad Leads and QA Lead, reporting into the CTO, so if you thrive in a fast paced environment where you're comfortable pushing a team to deliver and taking ownership of the whole delivery pipeline, this could be a great next step.

This is a hybrid role with office based work in Edinburgh. The expectation will be 1 or 2 days per week in the office.

Key Responsibilities

The Product Delivery Manager will be responsible for the following main areas of work:

Delivery & Execution Management

• Own execution of scoped work from user story through to development completion and release, driving pace at every stage of the cycle.
• Hold the development team to account for delivery against sprint commitments, challenging slippage directly and escalating early wherever pace or quality is at risk.
• Work with the Engineering Manager and Squad Leads to plan sprints, balance capacity and maximise team throughput and flow.
• Manage scope creep and handle functional trade-offs actively during development cycles.
• Map and resolve cross-squad and platform dependencies proactively, rather than waiting for blockers to be raised, to keep delivery on track.
• Partner with the QA Lead to ensure completed work meets the definition of done and fulfils the intended business outcomes without sacrificing speed of delivery.
• Translate high-level roadmap initiatives and customer change requests into well-defined epics, features and user stories, setting up each piece of work for fast, unambiguous execution.
• Partner with Product Designers, Engineers and business stakeholders to clarify acceptance criteria and edge cases before development starts.
• Maintain, groom and prioritise the team backlog based on strategic value, urgency and technical dependencies.
• Triage reported system bugs alongside feature work to ensure the right balance of technical debt resolution and new functionality.

Process Leadership & Continuous Improvement

• Foster an environment of high team accountability, removing operational blockers to maximise delivery flow and pace.
• Champion consistent Agile delivery practices, facilitating core planning and execution ceremonies where required.
• Monitor delivery metrics, including cycle time, velocity and release predictability, and act on them directly to keep the team executing at pace.
• Ensure engineering standards and governance guidelines are maintained throughout the delivery lifecycle, so pace is never achieved at the expense of quality.

Stakeholder Communication & Release Planning

• Serve as the functional point of contact for internal stakeholders regarding delivery timelines, milestone progress and scope adjustments.
• Coordinate release schedules with Operations and Product Management to ensure smooth end-user deployment and change management.

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