Loans Assistant Vice President Product Owner

Job Description

Purpose of the role

The purpose of a Product Owner is to maximize the value of the product by defining a clear product vision (are they setting the vision or would this align to ), managing authoring, refining and prioritizing the Product Backlog balancing trade-offs across desirability, viability and feasibility – making sure the right thing is being ‘built’, and prioritising work based on business goals. They act as the primary liaison between stakeholders and delivery teams, ensuring the product meets user/customer needs and delivers optimal value. Product Owners are responsible for developing a roadmap and driving execution of their product area/sub-journey, applying continuous improvement principles and techniques.

Accountabilities

• Ensure Product Alignment with Business Goals: Ensure that the product & its features are aligned with broader objectives, driving value and contributing to the organization’s overall strategy. Utilisation of market research, analysis of customer feedback and monitoring of industry trends to identify new products, features or enhancements.  

• Communicate Product Vision to Delivery Teams: Clearly articulate the product vision and goals to the delivery teams, ensuring they understand, align and are inspired to deliver the business value and purpose of each feature or user story.

• Create and Refine User Stories: Write clear, concise user stories with detailed acceptance criteria, refining them as needed to ensure the development team has all the necessary information to implement features successfully. 

• Agile Events: Participate in key Agile events such as sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives to keep the team aligned and focused on delivering the product backlog. 

• Managing the Product Backlog: Responsible for creating, maintaining, and prioritising the product backlog, ensuring the highest value features are delivered first, based on business needs, customer requirements and organisational impacts, balancing risk migration and future proofing against the product strategy. 

• Act as the Voice of the Customer: Continuously gather feedback from customers and end-users to understand their pain points and ensure that the product meets their needs and improves their overall experience. 

• Acceptance Criteria Definition & Management: Review and accept or reject work completed by the development team during sprints, ensuring that all delivered features meet the agreed-upon acceptance criteria and deliver business value. 

• Collaborate with Stakeholders:  Work closely with stakeholders (e.g., customers, business leaders, and marketing teams) to gather requirements, define product goals, and ensure that the product vision aligns with business objectives. 

• Monitor Product Performance and Iterate: Regularly assess product performance using KPIs and customer feedback, adjusting the product backlog and roadmap to improve functionality and meet evolving customer needs. Manage on-going readiness and 'run' activities of live products including monitoring, governance and approvals. 

• Risk and Control:  Managing risk, including identification of potential risks, development of strategies to resolve or mitigate and escalate as necessary those risks, and alignment between the product management and control functions.

Assistant Vice President Expectations

• To advise and influence decision making, contribute to policy development and take responsibility for operational effectiveness. Collaborate closely with other functions/ business divisions.

• Lead a team performing complex tasks, using well developed professional knowledge and skills to deliver on work that impacts the whole business function. Set objectives and coach employees in pursuit of those objectives, appraisal of performance relative to objectives and determination of reward outcomes

• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.

• OR for an individual contributor, they will lead collaborative assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will identify new directions for assignments and/ or projects, identifying a combination of cross functional methodologies or practices to meet required outcomes.

• Consult on complex issues; providing advice to People Leaders to support the resolution of escalated issues.

• Identify ways to mitigate risk and developing new policies/procedures in support of the control and governance agenda.

• Take ownership for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work done.

• Perform work that is closely related to that of other areas, which requires understanding of how areas coordinate and contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the organisation sub-function.

• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategy.

• Engage in complex analysis of data from multiple sources of information, internal and external sources such as procedures and practises (in other areas, teams, companies, etc).to solve problems creatively and effectively.

• Communicate complex information. 'Complex' information could include sensitive information or information that is difficult to communicate because of its content or its audience.

• Influence or convince stakeholders to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Join us as a Product Owner at the heart of delivery in Barclays’ Unsecured Lending business. A key role within the Loans team, supporting the delivery of customer-led product outcomes by working closely with engineering teams in Pune and the wider UK-based Loans function. Ensures product priorities are translated into clear, well-defined delivery artefacts, enabling efficient execution while maintaining alignment to customer outcomes, commercial objectives, and regulatory expectations.

Context & Opportunity

• Aligned to UK-based Product Owners, Journey Owners and Product Managers with shared accountability for outcomes.

• Co-located with engineering teams, providing exposure to platform, system and delivery design.

• Opportunity to contribute to the Loans team’s wider objectives and product strategy delivery.

• Opportunity to build expertise in Loans and Unsecured Lending and develop end-to-end product ownership capability.

 Key Accountabilities

• Create, own and manage a prioritised product backlog aligned to agreed product outcomes and roadmap priorities

• Develop clear user stories and acceptance criteria to support high-quality delivery

• Collaborate closely with engineering teams to clarify requirements and support execution

• Maintain alignment with UK-based Product teams ensuring delivery reflects customer, commercial and regulatory priorities

• Contribute to delivery of Loans team’s broader goals and roadmap objectives

To be successful as a Product Owner, you should have:

Basic/ Essential Qualifications:

• Strong communicator across business and technology teams

• Collaborative and outcome-focused, with the ability to make trade-offs for optimal prioritisation

• High ownership and accountability

• Curious and analytical with interest in product performance and optimization

• Participate actively in Agile ceremonies to support efficient delivery

• Proactively identify and escalate issues, risks or delivery delays to ensure timely resolution and maintain momentum

• Use data and insight to support prioritisation and continuous improvement

• Ensure delivered features meet acceptance criteria and deliver intended value  

• Experience working in an Agile delivery environment (Product Owner, Business Analyst, or similar)

• Strong backlog management, requirements definition, and user story development

• Familiarity with JIRA, Confluence, and analytics platforms

• Experience working with cross-functional or distributed teams

• Comfortable using AI‑enabled tools to improve backlog quality, analysis, and documentation, while recognising accountability remains with Product

Desirable skillsets/ good to have:

• Experience in Retail Banking, Loans, or Unsecured Lending

• Understanding of regulated financial services environments and customer outcome considerations  

• Experience in a Product Owner or product-aligned role

• Comfortable working with engineering teams and understanding technical considerations, with desirable knowledge of platforms such as Loans Management systems or risk decisioning systems

• Experience using SQL or similar tools to interrogate data and support decision-making

• Exposure to digital delivery, Behavior-Driven Development, and Agile delivery practices

What Success Looks Like:

• Clear, prioritized backlog enabling smooth delivery .

• Strong alignment between product priorities and outputs.

• Effective collaboration across product and engineering teams.

• High-quality delivery with minimal rework.

• Consistent focus on customer experience and outcomes and business value

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as experience with supporting the delivery of customer-led product outcomes by working closely with engineering teams in Pune and the wider UK-based Loans function

This role will be based out of Pune.