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Contract Type: Permanent
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Salary: : £52,000 to £65,600 – London: £55,365 to £65,600 / National: £52,000 - £58,000 (including allowance)
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Grade: Grade 7
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Number of open roles: 2
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Working pattern: Full-time, Part-time, Flexible working
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Closing date for applications: Tuesday 7thth May 12pm (noon)
Senior Product Manager
Location: London, Darlington, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham, Salford
About us
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) is the department for economic growth. The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate develops and operates tools and services to support businesses to invest, grow and export, creating jobs and opportunities across the country.
About the role
As a Senior Product Manager at the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) you’ll champion the delivery and continuous improvement of products and define, own, and solve problems that enable value. You’ll work with researchers to understand user needs; stakeholders and service owners to understand business value; and your whole team to prototype and implement solutions that are viable and sustainable. You’ll own and develop a coordinated product strategy with other teams in Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) and across the wider organisation, understanding the goals of our stakeholders, and work with your team to help validate assumptions, sharing insight and learnings to create better outcomes and demonstrate the benefits of user-centred design.
You’ll have the support of Lead Product Managers to help shape your product strategy, and to develop your craft. You will be responsible for managing products through the product lifecycle. You’ll work in a multidisciplinary team, as well as coaching more junior product managers. You’ll support writing updates to ministers and senior civil service leadership.
Product Managers at DBT have expert knowledge of product management techniques coupled with developing strategic skills. They provide direction and empowerment to one or more high performing multidisciplinary teams, ensuring return on investment and execution of the vision. Product Managers represent users throughout the delivery process, and advocate for well-governed Agile methodology to the rest of the department.
Main responsibilities
As a Senior Product Manager, you will manage the development of one or more digital services or products. In this role, you will:
- lead one or more multidisciplinary agile teams, providing product direction to deliver digital services and products through the product lifecycle.
- understand the policy context and business drivers behind ideas, and develop ways to identify and test the key assumptions to establish problem-solution fit, so that we quickly discover the most appropriate way to deliver user and business value.
- create effective, prioritised product roadmaps and product descriptions to meet user needs in a cost-effective way.
- deliver services that meet the Government Digital Service (GDS) Standard and are best in class for government, giving the same level of digital experience users expect from daily interaction with the most respected web services.
- underpin the delivery and iteration of digital services through a communicable understanding of diverse audience groups and effective analysis and presentation of qualitative and quantitative user data.
- develop and manage stakeholder relationships to create buy in for the product.
- work with your delivery manager to ensure your team is high performing.
You may also line manage product managers and support their Professional Development.
Skills and experience
It is essential that you have:
- Product ownership: You know how to use a range of product management principles and approaches. You can apply these in a variety of ways to balance the needs of users, the business and technology. You can be flexible, consider new ways of working and adapt to change, using evidence to inform your decisions.
- Strategic ownership: You can create and maintain a product roadmap that sets a clear direction for success and adapt it to new perspectives or dependencies. You can get buy-in from the organisation.
- User Focus: You can give direction on which user research tools or methods to use. You can meet the needs of users across multiple channels. You can show how user needs have changed over time. You can apply strategic thinking to provide the best service for the end user.
- Agile working: You can work in a fast-paced, evolving environment and use an iterative method and flexible approach to enable rapid delivery of value. You can coach and lead teams in agile practices, determining the right approach at the right time in the product lifecycle to achieve the right outcomes.
- Problem ownership: You can ensure that the right actions are taken to anticipate and resolve problems at the right time. You understand how problems fit into the bigger picture, coordinate the team to investigate problems and implement solutions or preventative measures.
- Working within constraints: You have experience of working with and challenging senior stakeholders, prioritising and mitigating constraints, adapting the approach depending on the constraints, and turning constraints into an advantage.
These are not necessary, but it would be ideal if you have:
- Lifecycle perspective: Experience of managing products and services at different phases of the lifecycle and moving between those phases.
- Operational management: You know how to design operational processes for the running and maintenance of products or services. You can make operations efficient, develop sustainable support models and act as an escalation point for operational issues.
How to apply
As part of the application process you will be asked to upload a CV and complete a 750 word personal statement outlining how you meet the essential skills and experience listed above. You can use bullet points and subheadings if you prefer.
Sift will be from week commencing Monday 6th May 2024
Interviews will be from week commencing Monday 13th May 2024
Please note these dates are indicative and may be subject to change.
If there is a high volume of applications, we will sift looking at your Personal Statement only. You may then be progressed to full sift or straight to interview.
How we interview
At the interview stage for this role, you will be asked to demonstrate relevant Technical Skills and Behaviours from the Success Profiles framework. These are role specific and in line with the DDaT Capability Framework.
The interview will include a scenario exercise which will allow you to show your product technical skills and illustrate it with examples from your career. The scenario will be shared with you the day before to allow you to reflect. No presentation is necessary.
This will be assessing the Technical Skills of:
• Product ownership
• User focus
• Agile working
Behaviours
- Making Effective Decisions
- Delivering at Pace
- Seeing the Big Picture
How we offer
Offers may be made in merit order based on location preferences. If you pass the bar at interview but are not the highest scoring you will be held on a 12-month reserve list in case a role becomes available. If you are judged a near miss at interview, you may be offered a post at the grade below the one you applied for.
This role requires SC clearance. DBT’s requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years. Failure to meet this requirement will result in your application being rejected and your offer will be withdrawn.
Checks will also be made against:
- departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
- your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
- security services record
- location details
Benefits
If you join us, you will get:
- learning and development tailored to your role
- a flexible, hybrid working environment with options like condensed hours
- a culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- a Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
- annual leave starting at 25 days rising to 30 days with service
- three paid volunteering days a year
- an employee benefits programme including cycle to work
More about us
This role can only be worked from within the UK, not overseas. If you are based in London, you will receive London weighting. DBT employees work in a hybrid pattern, spending 2-3 days a week (pro rata) in the office on average. Travel to your primary office location will not be paid for by DBT, but costs for travel to an office which is not your main location will be covered.
You can find out more about our office locations, how we calculate salaries, our diversity statement and reasonable adjustments, the Recruitment Principles, the Civil Service code and our complaints procedure on our website.
Find out more about life at DBT, our benefits and meet the team by watching our video or reading our blog!