Product Owner

Job Description

At abrdn, our purpose is to enable our clients to be better investors.

Clients worldwide trust us to find future-fit investment opportunities to deliver the outcomes they want. Our technology and insight help empower them to make better decisions, while the powerful partnerships we build help to enhance the expertise that we offer. And by enabling clients to invest responsibly, it helps us to build a better world.

We currently have an exciting opportunity for a Product Owner to join our interactive investor business.

About ii

interactive investor (ii) is the UK's number one flat-fee investment platform, with assets under administration approaching £55 billion and over 400,000 customers.

ii enables individuals in the UK to plan, save and invest in the way that works for them.

We want to transform how people access financial services in the UK, to make advice and guidance accessible and mainstream to individuals. At present, customers face a polarising choice between full comprehensive financial advice and a fully do-it-yourself solution with very little in between. We see an opportunity in that “middle space” for propositions that make it amazingly easy for customers to sort their big financial problems, and that enable the customer to trade-up for extra help if, and when, they need it.

About the role

The Product Owner will help deliver our advice and guidance capability.

We’ve made a lot of progress on this vision and are looking to build out the team. We’re looking for people with great product skills and experience who can look at a problem, translate that into business needs and requirements and then work with our developers and test teams to deliver a solution.

You’ll be leading a squad setting direction, capturing business requirements, performing business and systems analysis, supporting developers to design solutions, helping to build test strategies and analyse issues, particularly in relation to more complex journeys. 

You’ll be responsible for building and improving customer and colleague journeys, working as the link between the business and IT delivery.  The role will require you to build a strong knowledge of our business, the technical ecosystem, along with taking a data led approach to owning the outcome.  You’ll be responsible for decision making and prioritisation calls, building out the roadmap, setting a vision and metrics leveraging user insight.

Key Responsibilities

Product strategy

• Setting the product/feature goals and create the vision of the proposition being developed, and accurately convey that vision to the team.

• Build out, plan and prioritise the product backlog – ensuring the backlog is visible to the whole team, be responsible for the prioritisation of each proposition.

• Understand, balance, and appropriately manage the risks associated with product development activity.

  Customer insight

  • Build insight from customer testing, feedback, and data analytics to be the voice of the end customer and ensure decision making is data led where practical, but unafraid to make a call when the data is weak.

    Execution

    • Shaping and delivery of client journey, creating features, epics, and user-stories that define what we want to achieve, incorporating client and colleague feedback, focussed on changing measurable outcomes.

    • Carry out detailed analysis of the business needs, requirements, impact, scope, risks and benefits, and technical dependencies

    • Own the analysis process including developing high quality user stories containing business requirements, data mapping, integration considerations, acceptance criteria and non-functional requirements

    • Work with developers and architects to shape solutions and work with the test team to build out test strategies

    • Use objectives and KPIs to measure product performance and identify learnings

    • Work collaboratively with UX designers to ensure designs are aligned and create seamless, usable and accessible journeys

    • Provide direction daily, taking ownership to solve problems and deliver and promote the inspiring ii vision and behaviours.

    • Provide business and technical answers to questions required by squads in a timely manner

    • Play an active role in product ceremonies

    • Become the delivery teams SME on key processes, applications and platforms. Rapidly gain the knowledge to become the focal point for technical/business analysis.

    • Ensure business readiness of changes being delivered, including business process mapping and customer service training.

    • Use product/platform subject matter expertise to provide analysis and support for live issues and incidents, working with other support teams towards a speedy resolution.

      Leadership

      • Supporting the squad and working alongside other Product Owners to deliver the ii strategy/vision

      • Contribute to building a great team environment helping to grow talent, encourage strong collaboration, and helping to build team effectiveness and capabilities.

      • Mentor/coach associates/analysts

        What we’re looking for:

      • Understanding of agile principles and practices

    • Significant experience of product ownership in financial services, including shaping and delivering iterative product developments, balancing customer and business needs at all stages of the development lifecycle

  • Significant delivery experience operating in an agile Product Owner role, understanding and thoughtfully applying the underlying principles collaboratively throughout the team.

  • Strong ability to analyse systems from a business/technical perspective and document processes. Able to write concise and detailed user stories with acceptance criteria. Excellent organisational skills and attention to detail.

• Strong problem solving – seeking out and finding the information needed to support the goals of the team, irrespective of prior knowledge of the problem space

Pro-active and personable – able to easily forge relationships, gets out and about.  You take it on yourself to ensure the right things get done.  Able to work under pressure and meet tight deadlines.

Excellent communication skills with the ability to effectively lead a squad, with proven experience in inspiring & empowering individuals enabling them to achieve.

Proven experience of communicating and influencing with key stakeholders to drive the product agenda across functional boundaries.  Able to discuss and explain complex issues at all levels.

Detailed knowledge and understanding of the key financial life stages and solutions to help customers resolve their financial problems.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. Therefore, if you have a disability and would like to submit an application to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire and one of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment.  We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance.  We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.

If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.