Lead Product Manager

A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role.  If you don’t hold SC clearance, we will support you to apply assuming you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. 

As a Lead Product Manager, you will have considerable experience outlining the product strategy, managing product backlogs and producing a product roadmap. You’ll be responsible for working with a Delivery Manager to ensure products are delivered with a high-level technical assurance and to meet the businesses requirements & acceptance criteria.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Take overall responsibility for the delivery of the client’s product, whether first release or iterative development of an existing product
• Define and delivering a product strategy & roadmap
• Meet regularly with business stakeholder and delivery teams, attending in-person as required.  Manage relationships with a wide range of public sector and Aker internal stakeholders.
• Develop a deep understanding of the client’s mission and strategic targets
• Evaluate new ideas, planning features and changes to a product
• Demonstrate new features to stakeholders and helping people understand how the technical delivery meets the businesses requirements.
• Take ownership for timelines and roadmaps that bring the team and sponsors on the journey
• Host regular Show & Tells, driving the client engagement and buy in to product delivery.
• Work with the Delivery Manager to ensure product requirements are met with a high level of technical assurance.
• Take ownership of any impediments that occur within the team, working with the Delivery Manager to ensure an appropriate solution is found, escalating where necessary
• Champion quality software and Agile and lean development methodologies such as test-driven development, continuous improvement and continuous delivery
• Assess opportunities for application and process improvement and share with team members and/or stakeholders
• Coach the wider delivery team on Product Management methodologies and best practices within the public sector context
• Navigate the UK public sector's governance and assurance landscape, including GDS assessments. You will identify and manage product risks, ensuring all work is transparent and compliant with government standards

Core Competencies

• The successful candidate will have over 7 years’ experience in the Product Management discipline
• Proven experience of leading the development of cloud-based software data products & services
• Working within technical environments with a high-level of data privacy and security considerations
• A strong technical understanding and ability to communicate with technical and design/UX teams to lead all teams through to delivering the best possible products
• Extremely knowledgeable about data-driven product's
• Ability to provide guidance and insight to business stakeholders, challenging decisions &/or requirements as appropriate
• Ability to share and motivate others towards a vision and able to support your decisions with fact
• Organised and able to work to deadlines and roadmaps
• A very strong and clear communicator, with the ability to communicate to a variety of stakeholders at different levels of seniority
• Able to take a concept, nurture it, and develop through to a tangible improvement to the product
• Experience in data processing solutions in the public cloud providers AWS & Azure along with an appreciation for automation improvements for platforms that utilise IaC
• Ability to build a strong relationship with a Delivery Manager to collaboratively deliver at a high level
• Ability to work within multi-supplier rainbow teams, with an ethos of working together as one badge-less team
• Able to show empathy for the end-users, driving the client’s requirements in a sensitive environment
• A strong ability to identify problems and devise effective, innovative solutions to challenges that arise during the product lifecycle