Principal Product Manager (PM4)

Principal Product Manager | Hatfield | Hybrid Work (2 days in the office) 

Ocado Group is an equal opportunities employer and as such makes every effort to ensure that all potential employees are treated fairly and equally, regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, marital status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, age, or disability or union membership status.

About Us

Ocado Technology are putting the world’s grocery retailers online using the cloud, robotics, AI, and IoT.  We provide services to partner clients globally via our innovative advanced robotics technology, known as the Ocado Smart Platform ("OSP"), this drives our highly automated, multi-million pound Customer Fulfilment Centres (CFCs). In our CFCs - together with the proprietary software applications - we operate a world-class online grocery business that automates the single pick of products, ready for your online delivery.

About the Role

To lead product thinking for a strategically significant area of our technology platform as an individual contributor as a true subject matter expert. 

This is a role where domain knowledge and experience is essential as you support multiple product teams to shape the future of their products through data driven insights, understanding customer needs and closely following market evolution. 

You will be the go to person within Ocado for the domain and work very closely with engineering and data architects to ensure we are building great solutions that provide meaningful and sustainable business value.
Sitting within the Outbound and ISF department which covers a broad range of software and hardware products supporting Ocado’s CFC’s and Store fulfilment.

What you will be doing...

Lead in Product

• Support the development of product strategy for strategically significant areas of the platform.
• Own the overall product architecture within your domain and collaborate effectively across crafts.
• Collaborate closely with Engineering Leaders and Architects to ensure our product and technical architectures align and are both feasible and desirable for the platform.
• Support product teams in shaping goals that are aligned to business targets.
• Work closely with craft leaders within your domain, and effectively collaborate by sharing ideas and understanding the problems to solve for your product.
• Take the lead on communication and strategy for product initiatives within your domain that have high risk or significant investment, and can represent the product area to senior leaders across business missions.
• Support product managers on great practises that increase our effectiveness in developing communication plans, roadmaps, strategies and product vision.
• Provide focus for product managers in your domain and use your domain knowledge and craft experiences to support teams in finding the most valuable solutions.
• Ask the hard questions and provide healthy challenge for our PM teams to ensure we have the right level of ownership and decision making on key product challenges.

Drive Customer & Commercial Value

• You are the Subject Matter Expert for the product domain, having developed deep knowledge of current solutions, end-user and partner needs, and market and competitor landscapes.
• Use your knowledge of the product domain to identify risks relating to your department's product portfolio and represent these risks at a departmental level.
• Maximise the value of the future roadmap for your department by using your deep knowledge to recommend additions, removals, re-prioritisation and scope changes for items on the roadmap.
• Work with product leaders to develop a clear view of all metrics relevant to the success products in their domain.
• Provide guidance and support across the department by driving alignment on key metrics for products, and share great practises on how to use them.

Master Your Domain; Shape its Future

• Be an expert in product discovery techniques and continually seek to improve the quality of discovery activities.
• Understand and gather insights from market analysis and industry sources for your product domain. 
• Empower PMs with wider context and insights for the product domain to enable effective product discovery.
• Support concept discovery for complex initiatives within your product domain by providing expert knowledge and context.
• Have a strong understanding of the data landscape for your product area and are experienced with analytics tools and techniques. 
• Ensure product teams are focussing on the right metrics and are asking the right questions of their data to ensure we are continuously performing and evolving.

Elevate Product Mindset

• Be a highly effective coach and mentor and can demonstrate the impact you have on other product managers.
• Identify ways to elevate product craftsmanship by keeping up to date with leading product industry practises and research, and looking for ways to implement these across the craft
• Regularly reflect and seek feedback on your product know-how, which you apply in your day to day work
• Regularly share your experiences and thoughts on product management with others within the craft.
• Be the go to for expertise on a specific product area, and seek opportunities to cascade your deep knowledge in a way that your colleagues and end-users can follow and understand.

About you 

Essential

• Relevant industry experience or technology business
• Deep understanding of product management and product leadership
• Extensive experience in building and launching successful products with software/hardware engineering teams 
• Ability to communicate confidently with senior stakeholders
• Exceptional storytelling ability
• Excellent interpersonal, collaboration, coaching & mentoring skills
• Sharp analytical and problem-solving skills
• Fluency in English, both spoken and written

Desirable

• Experience building technology solutions for grocery e-commerce
• 5+ years Product Management experience

What we can offer you

Our employee benefits are designed for you, we care about people and we’ve ensured we have a wealth of benefits that focus on your well-being. We regularly review our benefits to ensure we are supporting our employees appropriately.

• 30 days ‘working from anywhere in the world’ policy 
• Wellbeing support through dedicated apps and an Employee Assistance Programme 
• 25 days annual leave, rising to 27 days after 5 years service (plus optional holiday purchase)
• Pension scheme (various options available including employer contribution matching up to 7%)
• Generous Private Medical Insurance (within the first month of joining!)
• Income Protection (can be up to 50% of salary for 3 years) and Life Assurance (3 x annual salary) 
• 22 weeks paid maternity/primary parent leave and 6 weeks paid paternity leave (once relevant service requirements complete) 
• Train Ticket loan (interest-free)
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Free shuttle bus to and from Hatfield Train Station to the Hatfield offices 
• Free shuttle bus to and from Welwyn Garden City Train Station to the Welwyn Garden City offices
• Opportunity to participate in Sharesave and Buy as You Earn share schemes
• 15% discount on Ocado.com and free delivery for all employees (within the first month of joining!

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