About Octopus
Octopus is a fast-growing company with more than 500 employees. Since we launched in 2000, we’ve established market leading positions across financial services, healthcare and energy. Right now we’re in the process of moving from a singular business (Octopus) to a broader group structure incorporating Octopus Energy, Octopus Ventures, Octopus Investments, Octopus Property and Octopus Healthcare.
About the role
As a member of the Products team, you will represent the “voice of the business” by maintaining and prioritising the backlog to ensure that the team is working on stories that maximise business value and deliver necessary fixes and functionality to continuously improve your product(s).
Essential Job Functions
Outline of responsibilities
- Work out how to make users love your product
- Build a vivid backlog of change and deliver continuous improvement
- Eliminate technical debt, maximise business value
- Be the ambassador and subject matter expert for the product internally and externally
- Work as the liaison with the business (single, trusted point of contact)
- Have full control over product strategy and roadmap
- Work closely with developers to prioritise product backlog and ensure valuable releases
- Obtain estimates, plan sprints, agree and oversee product delivery
- Manage your product(s) P&L, maintaining insightful analysis as to the success (or otherwise) of the product(s)
- Capture and track performance KPIs; share that data internally in order for the broader organisation to understand the products and ultimately make better informed decisions
- Formulate and communicate product features, functionality and positioning as well as expected and de facto business value to the company
- Collaborate with external partners, suppliers and adjacent Product Owners
- Inspire and motivate the development teams to deliver innovative and exciting solutions with an appropriate sense of urgency
- Communicate product features articulately to confirm the needs of users and allow development teams an accurate understanding
Job Specific Experience/Technical Skills/Abilities
Outline of skills/experience required
- Strong understanding and proven experience of agile processes (Scrum and Agile Hybrid), UX and design and familiar with supporting tools
- The ability to think strategically: creating a vision for the products and translate into clearly defined actions and deliverables
- Experience of working with technical teams (Developers, Testers & Business Analysts)
- Proven previous experience in a Product Owner, Business / Technical Analyst roles
- Prepared to roll up your sleeves and be incredibly delivery focused
- Ability to use your vision and knowledge to continuously improve products; from scribbling initial wireframes to shipping a product and measuring engagement
- A good team player with experience in encouraging and inspiring teams across areas of the business to share your product vision
- Solid experience working in a customer focused organisation and obsessed with constantly improving the customer / user experience
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to communicate accurately and effectively in verbal and written English, including with offshore teams
- Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to interact with a variety of audiences with tact and diplomacy and a high level of influencing and negotiating skills
- Strong planning and organisational skills with the ability to prioritise and meet deadline
- An analytical mind. Interpret data effectively and measure benefits and KPIs
- Possess a fundamental understanding of end-to-end customer experience integration and dependencies
Competency Requirements
- Customer Obsession – is about putting the customers’ needs at the heart of everything we do. We achieve this by listening, by making the complex simple and by delivering on our promise
- Focus on Impact – is about making things happen. It’s about recognising and avoiding the distractions. And it’s about executing really, really well
- Better & Better – is about having the humility to recognise that everything can be improved. We want a culture where everyone can put forward ideas and where people at all levels seek out, learn from and react positively to feedback
- Personality matters – at Octopus. We want people who are willing to roll up their sleeves, are passionate about what they do, and who retain their humility despite all they achieve. We are honest, open and decent, always.