Principal Product Manager

Job Description

Principal Product Manager, 12 Month Fixed Term Contract (FTC) 

Job Description 

At Genomics England, we’re looking for an experienced Principal Product Manager to provide product leadership for work on the trustworthy stewardship of genomic data and how we manage our relationship with those who choose to share their data for research. 

Our products and services operate in a uniquely sensitive environment. They must enable genomic data to be used responsibly for research while respecting the choices, expectations and trust of the people whose data makes this work possible. 

This creates complex product challenges that extend beyond a single feature, journey or team. They involve multiple products, people, policies, data, and technologies. They span operations and governance, with decisions that have lasting implications for participants, researchers, healthcare services and Genomics England. 

This is where you will make a difference 

As a proven Principal Product Manager, you’ll lead a strategically important product area that is an organisational priority. You will partner with the programme lead to set its vision, strategy and intended outcomes while coordinating discovery, direction and delivery across related products, services and squads. You will support with the leadership of the wider team, deputising for the programme lead where required. 

You’ll establish clarity where the path is uncertain, bring teams and senior stakeholders together around shared outcomes, and translate strategic direction into meaningful OKRs, coherent roadmaps and focused priorities. 

You’ll initially lead the team through early discovery product work, with a view to shaping delivery further down the line. This means ensuring we understand the right problems and gathering requirements before committing to solutions, using evidence to test assumptions and helping cross functional teams create products and services that are useful, feasible, responsible and sustainable. 

This is a Principal individual contributor role with meaningful scope to influence beyond a single squad. You’ll connect related work, manage complex dependencies and help teams make effective product decisions while remaining close enough to delivery to understand where support, challenge or intervention is needed. 

You’ll collaborate with participants, user researchers, designers, architects, engineers, data specialists, policy and governance colleagues, operational teams and senior leaders. Through clear direction, constructive challenge and inclusive decision making, you’ll help people navigate competing priorities and make thoughtful trade-offs. 

You’ll also play a leadership role within the wider product management chapter at Genomics England, owning cross-chapter initiatives, mentoring Product Managers and helping to drive excellent practice across teams. You may have direct line management responsibility for 1-2 product people. 

Why this role matters 

Participants are central to genomic research. Maintaining their trust requires more than meeting regulatory obligations. It means understanding their needs and expectations, involving them meaningfully and designing products and services that handle their choices and data responsibly. 

As Principal Product Manager, you’ll help shape how Genomics England approaches these challenges, with consideration to the full product lifecycle, creating a clear connection between participant needs, organisational priorities and the work of multidisciplinary teams. 

Your impact will be seen in the product direction you establish, the difficult decisions you support the Programme Lead to navigate and the products and services that emerge from that work, ultimately helping Genomics England maintain trusted relationships with participants and enable the responsible use of genomic data for research. 

What you’ll be doing 

• Leading a strategically important product area, setting its vision, strategy and intended outcomes while coordinating work across related products, services and squads. 

• Setting meaningful OKRs aligned with wider programme and organisational priorities, translating them into coherent roadmaps and focused backlogs. 

• Leading discovery from its earliest stages, framing complex and ambiguous problems, gathering requirements, testing assumptions and using research, experimentation and evidence to determine where teams should focus. 

• Leading products and services, with consideration to the full lifecycle, adapting direction as evidence, user needs and products evolve. 

• Bringing together user insight, qualitative and quantitative data, and relevant operational, technical, scientific, clinical and regulatory context to inform product decisions and measure impact. 

• Working across user research, design, engineering, data, delivery, operations, governance and policy to create shared understanding, align priorities and manage dependencies across squads. 

• Making transparent prioritisation and trade off decisions that balance participant needs, strategic value, feasibility, delivery constraints, risk and regulatory responsibilities. 

• Building trusted relationships with senior internal and external stakeholders, communicating direction clearly, constructively challenging assumptions and creating the conditions for cross functional teams to succeed. 

What you’ll bring 

You’ll bring substantial and direct product management experience and a strong record of leading complex products, services or product areas at Principal level or equivalent. You will be comfortable leading product thinking in the early stages of the product lifecycle where you do not yet have ownership of specific products. 

You’ll be comfortable operating across teams and organisational boundaries, setting direction where there is uncertainty and helping senior stakeholders and multidisciplinary teams make complex decisions together. 

You’ll bring: 

• Experience shaping product vision, strategy, outcomes and roadmaps across complex product areas, translating strategic direction into focused action. 

• Deep experience of leading discovery, including framing ambiguous problems, gathering requirements, using research and evidence to test assumptions and making confident product decisions. 

• A strong understanding of user centred product development, combining user insight, qualitative and quantitative data to shape priorities and measure impact. 

• Experience leading across multiple teams, disciplines or products, creating alignment, managing dependencies and making thoughtful trade-offs. 

• Strong stakeholder leadership, with the ability to communicate complex choices clearly, constructively challenge assumptions and build trust across organisational boundaries. 

• Sound judgement in balancing user value, organisational priorities, feasibility, risk and sustainability, particularly where decisions are complex or sensitive. 

• Experience leading through the full product lifecycle, from discovery and proposition development through to delivery, adoption and continuous improvement. 

• A collaborative approach to product leadership, including mentoring Product Managers and helping strengthen product practice. 

You do not need to come from a genomics background. Experience working with sensitive data or in healthcare, life sciences, government, financial services or another highly regulated environment would be valuable, but we’re primarily interested in your ability to lead complex product work and build trust across users, teams and senior stakeholders. Experience working on ‘know your customer’ type of work could be relevant. 

It would be helpful, but not essential, if you have experience with 

• Products or services involving participant, patient, citizen or customer consent, preferences and ongoing engagement. 

• Healthcare, clinical research, genomics or data intensive scientific infrastructure and software. 

• Products that support the responsible access, stewardship or secondary use of sensitive data. 

• Working within complex governance, assurance, ethical or regulatory frameworks. 

If you’re an experienced product leader who thrives on bringing clarity to complex problems, leading meaningful discovery and enabling cross functional teams to deliver lasting outcomes, this is an opportunity to shape products and services that strengthen participant trust and support the responsible use of genomic data at Genomics England. 

Qualifications

You’ll have a demonstrable track record of leading complex product areas at Principal Product Manager level or equivalent. While your qualifications provide a foundation, we’re particularly interested in the breadth and depth of your experience and your ability to provide strategic product leadership, set direction in ambiguity and influence across teams and organisational boundaries. Prior genomics experience is not required.

Additional Information

Salary From: £95,500

Closing Date: Sunday 1st November at 23:00 (UK time)

Please note: This is a 12-Month FTC (Fixed Term Contract). For internal candidates, we will consider this as an internal secondment for the same duration.

Being an integral part of such a meaningful mission is extremely rewarding in itself, but in order to support our people, we’re continually improving our benefits package. We pride ourselves on investing in our people and supporting them to achieve their career goals, as well as offering a benefits package including: 

• Generous Leave:  30 days’ holiday, plus bank holidays, plus additional leave for long service, and also the option to apply for up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
• Family-Friendly: Blended working arrangements, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits.
• Pension & Financial: Defined contribution pension (Genomics England double-matches up to 10%, however you can contribute more if you wish), Life Assurance (3x salary), an Electric Vehicle salary sacrifice scheme and a Give As You Earn scheme.
• Learning & Development: Individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, and reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
• Recognition & Rewards: Employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
• Health & Wellbeing: Subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace and Blinkist account, and access to an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu jabs.

Equal opportunities and our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace 

Genomics England is actively committed to providing and supporting an inclusive environment that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion best practice both within our community and in any other area where we have influence. We are proud of our diverse community where everyone can come to work and feel welcomed and treated with respect regardless of any disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, or social background. 

Genomics England’s policies of non-discrimination and equity and will be applied fairly to all people, regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, being pregnant or recently becoming a parent, race, religion or beliefs, sex or sexual orientation, length of service, whether full or part-time or employed under a permanent or a fixed-term contract or any other relevant factor.  

Genomics England does not tolerate any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying at work. Such behaviour undermines our mission and core values and diminishes the dignity, respect and integrity of all parties. Our People policies outline our commitment to inclusivity. 

We aim to remove barriers in our recruitment processes and to be flexible with our interview processes. Should you require any adjustments that may help you to fully participate in the recruitment process, we encourage you to discuss this with us. 

Culture

We have four key behaviours that represent what we would like Genomics England to feel like and the culture we want to encourage, in order for us to achieve our mission. These behaviours help us all work well together, deliver on our outcomes, celebrate our successes and share feedback with each other. You can read about these and other aspects of our culture here Culture | Genomics England

Blended working model

Genomics England operates a blended working model as we know our people appreciate the flexibility that hybrid working can bring. We expect most people to come into the office a minimum of 2 times each month. However, this will vary according to role and will be agreed with your team leader. There is no expectation that people will return to the office full time unless they want to, however, some of our roles require full time on site attendance e.g., lab teams, reception team. 

Our teams and squads have, and will continue to reflect on what works best for them to work together successfully and have the freedom to design working patterns to suit, beyond the minimum. Our office locations are: Canary Wharf, Cambridge and Leeds.

Onboarding background checks

As part of our recruitment process, all successful candidates are subject to a Standard Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.  We therefore require applicants to disclose any previous offences at point of application, as some unspent convictions may mean we are unable to proceed with your application due to the nature of our work in healthcare.