Product Manager

The Ministry of Justice is looking for Product Managers who want to make a difference by working on public services that really matter.

• Job Title: Product Manager
• Division: Digital and Technology
• Department: Ministry of Justice
• Location: London
• Grade: Aa
• Salary: circa £58,000 depending on experience
• Contract Type: 2-year fixed term

The products

Ministry of Justice (MOJ) Digital has a diverse portfolio of products to suit a wide range of product management skills. We are a mature, in-house software development team, increasingly building services with both public and professional user interfaces, built on top of our APIs and Cloud Platform.

The product you are placed on will be agreed closer to your start date but examples of products include:

• software for the public, like ‘visit someone in prison’: https://www.gov.uk/prison-visits
• software for internal users, like our intranet https://mojdigital.blog.gov.uk/2015/12/11/inside-out-lessons-learnt-from-building-a-new-intranet/
• platforms and APIs to help build our software like our ‘Cloud Platform’ https://mojdigital.blog.gov.uk/2016/03/22/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-cloud-and-platforms-but-were-afraid-to-ask/.

The role

You will be an experienced product manager leading a multidisciplinary team, supporting and continuously improving products of significant scale and complexity.

You will take products through discovery, alpha, beta and live phases of development with the goal of making government services simpler, easier and faster to use. You will devise and iterate the product roadmap and backlog, be a champion for user needs, document product knowledge, and communicate plans and progress through various channels including the blog, stakeholder meetings and demos. You will also be an active part of the broader product management community, receiving coaching and mentoring from your senior colleagues and taking part in informal support networks with your peers.

As a Product Manager for for MOJ Digital you will work with other delivery agencies within the justice system, central government departments, and the wider public sector to transform public services.

Product Managers at MOJ work on exciting products in support of services that improve lives. It is an opportunity to work with committed and talented user researchers, developers, designers, analysts, agile, and content specialists who share a vision for making better government through smarter use of technology.

Our product management profession is decribed on GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/communities/product-and-service-community.

Ministry of Justice Digital and Technology

The MOJ Digital and Technology team develops services that improve lives and is looking for product managers who want to solve tough problems.

Government Digital Services are a beacon of user centred design. We are looking for Product Managers who put users first and understand the value of defining problems before developing solutions. This means we need people who understand user research, user experience and design.

We apply a lean startup mentality at scale and need product managers who can operate in areas of extreme uncertainty by working with agility. We want product managers who can make data-driven decisions within an empowered, co-located software team of specialists including developers, researchers, designers and stakeholders from across the justice system. We have a great culture and modern tools (like Macbooks, Slack and Google apps).

We are actively improving the diversity of our workforce in order to get the best talent available. We want our workforce to represent the variety of people in the UK population and do not discriminate based on age, sex, pregnancy or family commitments, disability, race or religion.

Life’s too short not to do something important so join a team with a mission to improve millions of lives.

Benefits

Working here is great! You’ll get:

• Truly flexible working. Whether it’s working from home or remotely, working part time, job sharing, or working compressed hours, we have people doing it, and are happy to discuss options with you
• Lots of training and development opportunities
• A civil service pension with an average employer contribution of 22%
• 25 days annual leave (plus bank holidays), and an extra day off for the Queen’s birthday. No promises you’ll be invited to her party, though
• Great maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
• Bike loans and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
• Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers, and eye-care vouchers.

Skills and experience

We’re looking for an individual with strong interpersonal skills who likes working in a delivery focused, agile environment with multidisciplinary teams. You also contribute to the wider Product Manager community and share you skills and experiences with others across the MOJ, and across government. The skills you need as a Product Manager are summarised below and you can get more information at GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/product-manager-skills-they-need/product-manager-skills-they-need

It’s essential you have:

• Product ownership: you are experienced in applying product management tools, terms and concepts in a variety of ways. You can be flexible, consider new ways of working and adapt to change.
• User focus: you can commission research and collaborate with user researchers and can represent users internally. Understands the difference between user needs and desires of the user, and use research to inform prioritisation.
• Problem ownership: you take a problem statement and can work with a multidisciplinary team to validate the problem, refining it and narrowing its focus until it becomes feasible and valuable to solve
• Strategic ownership: focussed on benefits (not features), you develop ambitious visions and strategies and are able to get organisational buy-in and translate them into deliverable goals
• Experience of working with agility: you are familiar with the Agile Manifesto and act as a champion for working with agility. You can adapt your practices and have the confidence to try new approaches
• Product lifecycle perspective: you know when to move from one stage of a product lifecycle to another and ensure that your team is working towards the appropriate quality standards. You can manage products or services at different phases.

It is desirable that you have:

• Financial ownership: you can prioritise spending based on return on investment, and can support the creation of a business case
• An understanding of constraints: an understanding of policy, legislative, regulatory and operational constraints, adapting products where needed.
• Knowledge of the digital economy: you understand the range of contexts for digital products and design services to fit them, keeping up to date with new technologies and their potential use.