Animal Dynamics… about us
At Animal Dynamics we make vehicles that combine high efficiency with full autonomy, and which are able to do more with less impact on nature. Taking our inspiration from animals and the natural world, our bio-inspired designs achieve significant improvements in performance and efficiency over traditional vehicles across air, land, and water.
What motivates us is our desire to create original and worthwhile solutions to real problems. We are motivated to realise designs that will positively disrupt industries and technical approaches that have long been taken for granted.
Our current product focus is on Stork, a family of vehicles which have been designed as highly energy and cost-efficient aerial systems for carrying loads. These vehicles are full-stack autonomous vehicles, with complex mechanical, electronic and software features.
Our research and development programme is organised around three Core Technology themes:
- Service Portal
- End to End Autonomy
- Bio-Inspired Structures and Mechanisms
Based in Cowley, near Oxford, we are a friendly company and we recruit talented, committed people who want to work in a stimulating and supportive environment.
Overview of the role
Are you passionate about new and novel technology? Do you have experience bringing clarity to ambiguous high level user requirements about a technology into clear features and specifications? We have a new exciting role at Animal Dynamics which will drive forward the development of a new area of technology – our service portal: a cloud-based service to control fleets of autonomous aerial vehicles.
The service portal is initially for use on our unique heavy-lift logistics drone, STM part of the Stork family (capable of carrying 135Kg for 400Km). This product will remove pilots from danger, saving lives and helping us on a path to delivering an environmentally friendly, cutting-edge logistics offering. Our ambition is to fundamentally change the way goods are moved in the most demanding environments.
You’ll join a fast-growing company at the inception of product development, working in conjunction with our engineering and commercial teams to bring your vision to market. This is a hands on, impactful role and you will own the product vision that drives the commercial success of this new area of technology within Animal Dynamics. The role needs to blend technical expertise and strong stakeholder management to produce an outcome that meets the needs of the business. Reporting into the Business Development Director, you will be a strong advocate of the benefits of SaaS and be equally creative in your ideas for its application.
Responsibilities… what will you do?
As Portal Product Manager you will be responsible for:
- Understanding the marketplace and articulating competition and product positioning, becoming an expert in the market.
- Gathering and collating market and business needs and driving the development of product requirements based on these findings, potentially creating user stories.
- Developing and owning a product delivery roadmap for features based on your knowledge of market and business needs.
- Making reasoned business-led recommendations for feature and functional prioritisation within the roadmap.
- Developing a framework to outline feature pricing (e.g. free versus premium).
- Defining and controlling dependencies with all project deliverables.
- Liaising with the Business Development team to ensure opportunity and product roadmap alignment.
- Articulating these requirements to the product development team using Agile development methodology.
- Working with the UX/UI team to define the best possible user experience.
- Coordinating user acceptance testing.
- Presenting internally and externally, including to prospects and customers.
- Driving product releases and launches.
- Ensuring compliance with security, privacy/GDPR needs.
- Actively keeping abreast of new products and technologies, ensuring you always propose the best possible solution.
Essential skills and experience… what are we looking for?
You will have the following skills and experience:
- Good first degree in a relevant discipline e.g. engineering, computer science etc., with strong product management experience in a technology field (ideally software).
- Able to convert complex, potentially ambiguous customer problems into clearly defined product features.
- Experience in driving the creation of world-class software products in an agile environment.#
- A good understanding of the monetisation of SaaS products e.g. subscription or micropayment services.
- Experience with, and a good understanding of, the security required to protect data in the cloud.
- Able to analyse complex data, deriving insights from trends in market and user opinions and behaviour.
- Proven ability to work with different business functions, including close integration and communication with highly technical teams, including software.
- A strong and clear communicator experienced with a variety of stakeholders at different levels of seniority and knowledge.
- Comfortable dealing with and owning/resolving ambiguity in a fast-moving environment, requiring an inquisitive and can-do approach.
- Decisive, visionary, and able to support decisions with research.
- Experience running beta and pilot programs with early-stage products.
Desirable skills and experience
- MSc degree or above in computer science, maths or an engineering-related discipline.
- A SaaS product specialist with a content platform where you are used to co-ordinating and partnering to deliver functionality.
- Keen interest in autonomous air vehicle systems.
- Experience of working in a safety-critical aviation environment.
- A drive to seek out issues and obstacles that prevent goals being reached.
Benefits… what do you get?
- Competitive salary to be discussed with the successful candidate. Indicative: basic salary circa £62,000 pa + market supplement, dependent on experience
- EMI share options scheme
- Perks discount scheme
- Flexible working
- 25 days annual leave, bank holidays, plus 3 days additional leave for Christmas closure
- Pension scheme
- New Career Development Framework to support your professional development
This role is advertised as full-time but we want to hire the best person and would therefore consider part-time options.
Note to all applicants
Due to the security classification on the work we do, we will undertake a routine Baseline Personnel Security Standard check on the successful applicant. This is a standard process which includes references and career history checks.
For full details of how we will use your personal data please see our Recruitment Privacy Statement available at www.animal-dynamics.com/rps