AdaptiveLab works as a start-up for hire, helping companies like ASOS.com and YouGov to build innovative digital products, services and apps. We’re small but we’re growing quickly and are looking for a spirited product manager who can help us deliver awesome on a daily basis.
Interested yet? What if we told you we’re building the company we always wanted to work at; a company packed full of smart people, with a focus on doing projects that are challenging yet fun and supported by a great working culture.
On top of that, remuneration will be competitive, you’ll get a training budget and money to kit out your work station. Flexible working is encouraged – we’re interested in the quality of work delivered not what time you leave the office – and your development is seen as key to the companies success. Sounds pretty good, right?
We’re looking for someone who can take our current products and make them better, charm clients, prioritise a backlog, talk tech with our developers and UI with our designers. We know it’s a lot to ask but maybe that’s you?
What to expect
You’ll be managing the development of a couple of your own products, plus working with the rest of the team to refine our process and contribute ideas to other products. You’ll be working closely with the client to identify new products and features, drawing on their needs, ideas and pain points as well as our own ideas. Then you’d be responsible for guiding the best of these ideas from sketches on a whiteboard, through development and testing, to finished products. You’d also being keeping an eye out for other opportunities, whether that’s new clients, a new project with existing clients, or a product we can build for ourselves then license to other people.
We can’t give you a lot of detail on the products you’ll be managing at this point, but they fall somewhere in the cross-over between social, big data and ecommerce, for a mixture of consumer and business users.
What we’re looking for
We’re looking for people who can comfortable combine high-level and hands-on. You’ll either need to be demonstrably strong in the following three areas – or at least have potential and the willingness to become amazing at them:
1. Client relationships
Because this role involves such close work with our clients, we’re looking for someone with the skills to manage and develop client relationships. That involves both keeping clients engaged and informed throughout the project, but also coming up with new features or products and persuading the client that they’re brilliant, must-build ideas.
2. Project management
We’re a small, fast-moving team, so you’ll need to be comfortable working autonomously. That’s not to say the rest of us won’t be there to support you, help you and talk things through. But you’ll be the one driving your projects forward, and deciding what needs to be done when. This will require some knowledge of the technology you’re working with, and an eagerness to fill in the gaps of your knowledge. We work in an agile way, so you’ll either need to already be fluent in stand-ups, iterations and planning poker, or a quick learner.
3. Product ownership
On top of all of this, you’ll need to have a passion for delivering great products. That means you’ll always be thinking about the user; be able to balance technical and business considerations; and be as comfortable fleshing out the details of a feature as building a high-level product roadmap. We want someone who can master the details without losing sight of the high-level view. If you’re in the habit of asking “how does doing this right now now help us to achieve our long-term goals for the product”, we want to talk to you.
Responsibilities
- Manage product priorities – balancing client requirements, user feedback, insights from analytics and testing, technical debt, our own ideas and keeping track of it all using the relevant tools
- Work with the developers & designers, not against them – give the team the product knowledge, clear priorities, and sensible process they need so they can build the right things for the product, in the right way. And make sure nothing gets in the way.
- Getting under the bonnet – you’re the product guru so no-one should know it better than you
- Customer champion – you should live, breath and fight for the customer (end-user)
- Build client relationships and develop new business – everything from spotting new opportunities to helping us wow clients at pitches.
- Help build a better company – play your part in making Adaptive Lab a better place to work
- Grow the team – attract great new people
Desired Skills & Experience
- Some experience in a product management, digital producer or project manager role.
- Communication skills Steve Jobs would be proud of. You’ll need to be able to talk in broad brush strokes with strategists and in bits and bytes with developers; to charm clients with big-picture visions but also explain details clearly enough so everyone’s always on the same page.
- A passion for learning and testing – both in product management but also in the related fields of technology, design, business, marketing and wider areas
- Confidence in numbers – web analytics and defining measurement metrics and excel/similar applications
- You love solving problems
- Knowledge and/or experience of agile development practices
- Experience defining and delivering MVPs is a plus
- An opinion on whether we should get an office dog or an office nanocopter or both, and a willingness to join in this rolling debate.
Get in touch
Sound interesting? Send us a CV and a quick cover note: jobs@adaptivelab.co.uk