Working at SH:24
First off, thank you for considering a role with us.
SH:24 is a pioneering online sexual and reproductive health service, delivered in partnership with the NHS. We make it easy for people to self-manage their sexual and reproductive health online by providing free STI test kits, contraception & treatment, information and advice – 24 hours a day. We’ve won a host of awards and industry recognition for what we do, and we’re happy to say that our reach and services offered are expanding every day.
We are not-for-profit and passionate about delivering discreet, convenient and clinically safe sexual health services. Our vision is to make it easier and faster for people to access sexual and reproductive health services, no matter where they live; we’ve been doing it since 2013. We’re also proud of our community and the people who work for us; those who have helped us shape a company that puts our users at the heart of everything we do by designing services that are easy to use, easy to access and easy to understand by all that need them.
The role
This is a rare, incredibly exciting and rewarding opportunity to join a high performing team and a rapidly expanding health tech scale-up, with a meaningful social mission.
We are looking for a confident, talented and motivated Product Owner to champion and manage a portfolio of our products, end to end; from vision to delivery.
We want to find someone who will help us achieve our mission and evolve and scale our products and services.
We are open minded to the professional background and experience of candidates (hence the salary banding). We are always looking for people with energy and the right attitude, who are willing to apply and develop themselves within an area they are really passionate about.
Our current Product and Engineering team is made up of 16 wonderful people. Two product owners, 12 software engineers and two QA testers. We’re committed to design and are actively growing our design team.
There are tangible growth opportunities in this team, you will be offered all the support and encouragement we can afford.
What we need from you
You will have a passion for delivering and upholding excellent experiences. You are adept at identifying, synthesising, understanding and championing user needs.
You will need to be a highly motivated self-starter – ready to take ownership of a product portfolio and roadmap, which you will be responsible for delivering. You will need to be self-organised, highly disciplined and feel comfortable working openly and collaboratively to overcome or remove blockers.
You will be an expert at collating, assimilating, synthesising and communicating requirements which meet the needs of multiple stakeholders/perspectives.
You will be enthusiastic about creating positive social change, be user focused, collaborative, hard working and have a flexible approach suited to working within an agile fast-paced health care environment.
You will be a team player, and work in cross-functional teams, with designers, developers, other Product Owners and other key stakeholders in the organisation (inclusive of clinical, operations and finance teams).You should enjoy communicating, developing and maintaining strong relationships to ensure that you fully understand key departmental objectives, as well as the overarching strategy.
You will be user-centred and naturally inclined to put users at the centre of development to meet their needs, always looking at ways to ethically measure and iteratively improve their experience. You will embrace a design-led ‘build, test and learn’ approach and continuously seek optimisation.
Responsibilities
- Work closely with the board to define and nurture product vision and strategy
- Focus the team around that vision. Take ownership of and manage backlogs
- Inject energy and freshness into team ceremonies
- Have a user-centric approach to problems whilst maintaining a sharp focus on business strategy and aims
- Work with our VP of Engineering, other POs and Dev Leads to ensure alignment of product and technology (including planning and prioritisation).
- Work closely with the marketing team to ensure roadmaps and features are aligned with marketing and communications strategies
- Work closely with designers and copywriters to specify requirements, support testing and prototyping and manage the delivery of assets and components
- Champion user needs; anticipating and empathising with user needs
- Utilise the rhythm of regular meetings with other departments both to experience the issues they have and to educate and inform them about the development process
- Manage the new product development process, including the division and management of a product roadmap, together with testing and release schedules
- Gather requirements in line with business objectives and then collate, synthesise and deliver new features and optimisations; diligently managing expectations
- Provide insight to colleagues on the product performance
- Directly contribute (wherever possible and/or required) to the entire development process, end to end
- Foresee and mitigate upcoming challenges and issues
Generate detailed user stories and acceptance criteria - Personally UAT stories and work with QA engineers to ensure features are acceptable
- Constantly review user feedback and analytics in order to optimise our products and improve user experiences
Skills & competencies
Key experience
- A demonstrable history as a Product Owner for at least 2 years.
- Working in a fast paced highly agile, start-up environment.
- Experience with a varied product portfolio (adding new features whilst optimising / maintaining existing ones).
- Working within a multidisciplinary team of designers, researchers, developers – as well as collaborating with colleagues across the entire organisation.
- Managing feature and optimisation stories from conception through to deployment. Overseeing developing high level requirements (inclusive of user testing as required), prototyping, design, acceptance criteria, software development and UAT.
- Well versed with agile methodologies, including Kanban.
Confident leading team ceremonies (stand-ups / planning / retrospectives). - Demonstrable experience of working with senior team members.
- A depth of experience and confidence in devising and leading product roadmaps and managing complex priorities and backlogs.
- Exposure to/management of managing e-commerce biased products.
Technical skills
- Authoring ACs.
- Gather clear requirements and prioritise needs.
Organise backlogs, plan, maintain momentum and facilitate user acceptance testing. - Extensive experience with Agile tools, be it Shortcut, Jira, Trello, Basecamp or another, inclusive of analytics and performance metrics.
- Will have, as part of a previous role, understood a complex user-facing or B2B application, capable of breaking down its features and architecture in a way non-technical employees could understand.
- Practical experience working on multiple projects within a multidisciplinary team in a fast paced, iterative environment.
- Basic design skills and experience using tools such as as Figma, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite etc (ability to generate low-fi mockups / wireframes).
Soft skills
- Excellent listener.
- Second to none communication skills.
- Highly collaborative.
- Align a cross-functional team in delivering value to our users and the business.
- Have an awareness of what it means to work within healthcare, to be responsible for delivering services that protect and support users particularly those who may be more vulnerable.
- Quick to learn.
- Attention to detail.
- Ability to manage expectations of internal and external stakeholders.
- Managing expectations and celebrating success.
Character & personality
- A good listener, honest critic and imaginative problem solver.
- A willingness to get stuck in and be hands-on.
- Patient.
- Disciplined, organised and thorough.
- Ability to keep calm and think rationally under pressure, and react quickly and efficiently to change.
- Drive and determination to always get the job done to the highest standard, and willingness to go the extra mile.
Nice to have, but not essential
- A relevant degree.
- Experience of working with OKRs or similar objective based frameworks.
- Experience of working within the health care sector.
- Experience using/managing a CMS.
- Background in design, software engineering, e-commerce (conversions, performance, UX and analytics), technical writing or business management.
What you’ll get from us
We are always interested in up-skilling our employees, and are flexible in ways to do it: be it courses, books, onsite or remote learning with a colleague – whatever suits the situation best. If there is a particular skill or product you would like to work on and improve, we’ll always try to accommodate you.
We’re also keen to allow the team to work in the way they want – you can choose the OS of your machine, your chair, standing desk, dual monitors etc. If there is anything you need, don’t be afraid to ask.
As well as remuneration in the region of £40-70k based on experience, SH:24 provides a number of other benefits, including 25 days of annual holiday (in addition to the days between Christmas and New Year), truly flexible working, excellent pension contributions and life insurance.
Our values
Our common values underpin everything we do as employees at SH:24. They show ‘how’ and ‘why’ we enjoy working together. We feel these values represent our staff and will help you understand what it means to be a part of SH:24.
- Respect: Understanding, respecting, and supporting one another is fundamental to us.
- Acceptance: We enjoy each other’s company, we’re open minded and accepting of people’s differences.
- Empathy: We are proud to positively impact people’s lives. We love to hear from our users and always want to do better.
- Reflection & Initiative: We think critically and thoughtfully and are committed to trying out our ideas.
- Conscience & Creativity: We have a strong social conscience. We explore big issues and we’re driven to respond creatively.
- Drive & Enthusiasm: A commitment to grow, succeed and celebrate together.
Equality and diversity
As an employer, SH:24 is committed to inclusivity.
We want to increase representation of currently under-represented groups to make SH:24 more diverse.
Our aim is to build an inclusive team, where everyone is able to be themselves at work and feel supported, empowered, valued, respected, fairly treated and able to achieve their full potential.
As an inclusive employer we will not tolerate discrimination.
Interview process
The interview process comprises of three stages:
- 30 minute ‘get to know you’ telephone interview with a member of the Product & Engineering team.
- 90 minute face to face interview, with a small panel, where we will ask you to present a prepared exercise.
- 30 minute follow-up interview with a senior member of the team.
The panel will be composed of colleagues from the Product & Engineering team and representation from other teams across the wider organisation.
Please note: we will not be reviewing applications till the New Year. Merry Christmas!