Product Owner

We are seeking an experienced Product Owner for our London or Amersham office (hybrid working with flexibility). Other offices will be considered if the successful candidate is happy to travel to London once a week.

Reporting to the Senior Engineering Manager, this role sits within one of our Product/Software Engineering Teams, supporting actuarial, investment and employee benefits platforms and products, with this role focused specifically on internal systems that support the critical business applications for time recording, billing, file exchange, contacts management and Documents management activities.

Our engineering team is diverse in people, technology, and processes, offering a dynamic environment for an experienced leader to drive technical excellence, innovation, and best practice within the internal product portfolio.

• Acting as the primary interface to funnel both business and technical enhancements and be the key point of contact to analyse requirements for work and communicate with the business agreed pathways and details around the products.
• Incorporating new working practices, standards and policies introduced by Howden and ensuring maturity and standards are kept, maintained and reportable (in conjunction with the Engineering Managers and senior management)
• Analyse queries received and manage workload and tickets according to complexity, business priority and team priorities. Where complex issues are raised, analyse and document solutions for resolutions.
• Agree, assign and raise tickets for features and epics (in ADO) and maintain roadmaps using Product Plan. Resolve fewer complex issues within agreed SLAs
• Agree and request resource allocation as required with a view to delivering against agreed metrics and KPIs
• Oversee the design, development, testing and release of software using engineering best practices, and coordinate work with other managers, across different areas and domains
• Work close with Product Owners and delivery leads to build roadmaps that the teams will deliver against
• Take an active role in the implementation of key business project developments and process improvement.
• Drive design and planning activities by removing ambiguities, resolving dependency questions and work with the team to provide engineering estimates and delivery

We would love to hear from you if you have:

• Previous experience in a similar role e.g., Product Owner, QA Analyst etc with experience with back-end products
• Experience in a Microsoft tech stack and be proficient using ADO (Azure DevOps)
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral and able to seek and deliver clarity and transparency
• Ability to build great relationships with the engineering team and the wider stakeholder group and engineering organisation to contribute to company-wide best managerial and technical practices and standards
• Ability to manage complex requirements with a complex set of internal stakeholders.
• Ability to positively challenge and influence.
• Good organisational skills and be adaptable to change and the unforeseen
• Ability and desire to grow the understanding of Agile within the product set you manage and own

• Previous experience working in the pensions space, consulting or another highly complex back-end environment is desirable
• Financial services industry experience
• Solid analytical and critical analysis skills are desirable.

We recognise that Product Owners may work in different ways and be from different backgrounds.

What's in it for you:

• Competitive discretionary annual bonus.
• Core benefits including life assurance of four times salary, income protection of 75% of salary for up to five years, and single private medical insurance cover.
• A generous pension scheme with 5% employee contributions matched by a 10% employer contribution.
• 25 days' annual leave, increasing to 27 days after five years' service.
• Access to the Howden flexible benefits programme, offering a wide range of benefits and discounts to support your wellbeing, family life and lifestyle.
• The opportunity to be part of a growing global business where career development, collaboration and innovation are encouraged.