Senior Product Manager is required for a 6 month contract working within the Client Organisation responsible for the New High-Speed Rail project in the UK this is a multi-billion-pound high-speed railway to directly link the city centres of: London, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.

The Senior Product Manager works within the Digital, Data and Technology Department with is tasked in delivery quality IT platforms, products and services to provide the project with the latest Digital, Data and Technology services.  This role is responsible for the quality of products. The role is accountable for utilising knowledge of user needs and business goals to resolve problems and set priorities for their delivery teams.

The Senior Product Manager will be responsible for a collection of products within comms and video conferencing – this largely but not exclusively means Microsoft Teams and will allow the organisation to operate a fully functioning hybrid environment to enable effective meeting connecting onsite and offsite employees.

The Senior Product Manager will manage a number of vendors who are supply and supporting he video conferencing / comms technology and although wont deal with the day-to-day tech support will be responsible and accountable for the whole service, implementing improvements, ensuing vendors are meeting expectations, managing user experience & user behaviours, deliver a reliable usable product that meets expectations.

The Product Function own the vision and strategy for multiple products, manage demand, communicate with HS2 stakeholder’s community, work with the Architecture Function architecture in the development of new and existing products and services by defining and creating value for users. Ensuring enough capability and capacity is available (e.g. DevOps, Engineering, Quality Assurance (QA) and Test capabilities) to deliver business enabling products.

Must Have’s for the Role:

The Senior Product Manager will have experience as Product Management within Digital / Technology (IT), ideally within the video conferencing, comms, Microsoft Teams, connectively space although not essential what is essentially is being Product Manager for Digital / Technology (IT) and have experience in managing a Feedback Environment (user experience) & must have experience dealing & communicating with executive level (CFO, CIO, MD, CEO etc) who are initially the primary users of the technology.  The successful person must have superb stakeholder and communication skills to firstly manage vendors and secondly to effectively stakeholder manage the users of the Products – user experience / expectations, effective problem ownership/management etc.

Working Situation - Hybrid
Role is office based from Snowhill, Birmingham coupled with Hybrid working – expectation is to work 5 days a fortnight from the Birmingham office and the rest of the time at home. Please note currently everyone is working from home due to Omicron probably for the next 2 months.

Successful candidate needs to be able to have a notice eriod of 2 weeks, start date th Feb.

Duties & Responsibilities

• To be accountable for providing leadership and direction for delivery teams, with responsibility for products in their remit.
• To be responsible for providing day to day management of suppliers who will deliver various product development capabilities (on HS2’s behalf).
• To be accountable for defining and maintaining product strategy and vision, supporting the business to define future strategy for products, and subsequent product requirements.
• To be responsible for discovering opportunities to sustain initiatives, features and functional enhancements, working with delivery teams and 3rd party suppliers to effectively deploy these.
• To be accountable for development and maintenance of product roadmaps.
• To be responsible for leading and assisting in elements of programme management activity.
• To be responsible for establishing and managing stakeholder relationships relating to products within remit.
• To be responsible for budget management and developing business cases to demonstrate how product outcomes will add benefit and value.

Required Criteria

Must Have’s for the Role:

The Senior Product Manager will have experience as Product Management within Digital / Technology (IT), ideally within the video conferencing, comms, Microsoft Teams, connectively space although not essential what is essentially is being Product Manager for Digital / Technology (IT) and have experience in managing a Feedback Environment (user experience) & must have experience dealing & communicating with executive level (CFO, CIO, MD, CEO etc) who are initially the primary users of the technology.  The successful person must have superb stakeholder and communication skills to firstly manage vendors and secondly to effectively stakeholder manage the users of the Products – user experience / expectations, effective problem ownership/management etc.

Open to people from a range of backgrounds although a blend of corporate and public funded organisations would be ideal – must be able to work in a very fast paced environment and also managing the governance (red tape) working for a public funder organisation.

Skills:

• Life cycle perspective. Ability to successfully lead teams through the full product life cycle. Ability to identify which tools and techniques should be used at each stage. Ability to identify and deal with potential risks across or between all stages of the product life cycle.
• Problem ownership. Ability to anticipate problems and provide preventative and resolution measures. Ability to articulate the problem and help others understand and implement changes.
• Product ownership. Ability to define and create approaches, as well as new ways of working.
• Strategic ownership. Ability to develop and communicate appropriate strategies.
• User focus. Ability to give direction on which tools or methods to use to ensure products meet the needs of the business and the end user.
   

Knowledge:

• Knowledge of Digital / Technology (IT) Product development and administration

Type of experience:

• Experience of managing budgets
• Experience of delivering roadmaps
• Experience of vendor management / managing suppliers
• Experience of working with stakeholders within a products function