Product Manager

Job Type:

Permanent

Build a brilliant future with Hiscox

The Team:

The Hiscox UK Product Owner Chapter forms the bridge between the business and the technology teams, ensuring that technology change is prioritised, defined, broken down and delivered in a way that enables the business to achieve its strategic goals, whilst also enabling the technology strategy. This means understanding the end-to-end context of the change and having a laser-focus on value so that we can ensure both that we're doing the right things and doing the things right. As such, we are looking for exemplary collaborators; people who thrive on building relationships, who aren't afraid to challenge how things are done, and are capable of driving consensus and guiding people through every stage of the change journey, from idea to reality.

The role:

The Technical Product Owner is a key role that sits within the Hiscox UK Retail IT team and is focused on delivering value across a designated value stream by aligning products and solutions to customer and stakeholder needs. As the key interface between the business, technology, and customer experience, you will be responsible for translating strategic objectives into actionable product / service / technical initiatives that deliver business outcomes. In this role you'll work with the value stream sponsors, Project / Programme Managers the Head of Digital and Integration Platforms and various Tech Leads / Solution Architects to craft and own a strategic roadmap, based on business strategy changes and the IT Technical Roadmap and to manage and prioritise the backlog to best deliver change,

You will be someone who enjoys making things happen and consider stakeholder management one of your strengths, with the ability to effectively engage with both business and technical stakeholders. You like to be an empowered decision maker, able to prioritise, and can quickly establish where time needs to be invested to drive business value, providing cost effective solutions to the business in line with the overarching strategy.

The Product Owner is empowered to make decisions around priority, scope and requirements driving stakeholder engagement, ensuring they are clear on customer needs ensuring a continuous flow of value from the team.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and communicate the technical and functional vision, strategy and roadmap for the Integration and Digital Services team, ensuring alignment with the business objectives and technology strategy.

• Collaborate with key business stakeholders, as well as Value Stream Product Owners and Project Managers, to understand business outcomes and objectives.

• Be a key player in vendor / partnership relationship management for these critical services and products with respect to the functional product roadmap, building and maintaining excellent working relationships with key 3rd party stakeholders, and where appropriate pro-actively influencing vendor product roadmaps.

• Collaborate closely with the software engineering team leads to design, develop, test and deploy high quality, scalable and secure solutions that meet the functional and non-functional requirements of the stakeholders.

• Contribute to and oversee the production high quality analyst artefacts, including but not limited to, user stories, functional and non-functional specifications.

• Supporting test activities including triage and analyse delivery bugs found and review results.

• Build and manage a backlog of technical and functional improvements for the core platforms you are responsible for, working with other key stakeholders from technology and wider business teams to refine and prioritise.

• Manage and monitor the technical performance, quality and risks of the software products and services, ensuring adherence to the best practices, standards and policies of the organization.

• Support evaluations of new and emerging technologies, tools and methodologies that can enhance the software development process and/or deliver value to the business and customers.

• Provide technical guidance and assistance to the systems analysts / vendor analysts and foster a culture of innovation, collaboration and continuous improvement.

• To develop team psychological safety, and in turn develop a continuous improvement culture within your sphere of influence to ensure that we are constantly delivering efficient and effective technical change.

• Develop and maintain strong relationships with key internal and external stakeholders, such as executive sponsors, product owners, business analysts, vendors and other technology teams, ensuring alignment and integration of the software functions with the wider technology landscape

• Ensure adherence to agile principles and best practices where appropriate, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation and customer / delivery focus within and across the teams.

• Identify and manage risks and issues that may impact the delivery, quality, scope or ongoing function of the technology platforms.

• Be a key contributor to the PO by defining and implementing the best practice standards

Key Skills

• Proven experience of eliciting, documenting, and delivering high quality business and systems analysis artefacts to clearly articulate how the technology should work.

• Good knowledge of insurance domain and business processes, such as underwriting, claims, risk management, etc.

• Experience of translating business requirements into user stories and technical designs, supported by development teams.

• Experience of testing to support development.

• Understand the E2E Delivery & Release lifecycle and ways of working. Be curious to learn how it differs across applications.

• Ability to define and prioritize product features and user stories based on customer needs and business value.

• Experience with agile methodologies and tools, such as Scrum, Kanban, Jira, etc.

• Ability to manage stakeholders' expectations and communicate effectively with developers, testers, customers, vendors and senior management at both business and technical level.

• Ability to conduct user research, testing, and feedback sessions to validate and improve product quality and usability.

• Collaborative team player, keen to learn and share ideas with leadership team peers.

• Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities.

• Excellent people skills including the ability to motivate and coach. Must possess a high level of situational awareness and able to switch management style according to team dynamic, staff personality type and environment.

• Ability to multi-task and adapt to fast-changing landscapes.

• Quick leaner with a willingness to develop commercial awareness and vendor management skills.

Experience required:

• Previous experience as a technical product owner/manager.

• Preferably P&C Insurance domain experience

• Strong evidence of the ability to prioritise based on value and risk.

• An extensive knowledge of API methodologies (REST and SOAP). B2B integration and cloud technologies.

• Determined and tenacious approach to delivering high standards and high-quality deliverables, even under tough circumstances.

• Experience working in an Agile environment and with OKRs.

• Use of online collaboration tools, Atlassian suite (JIRA/confluence), and advanced excel skills.

Work with amazing people and be part of a unique culture