Technical Product Manager (Developer Experience)

Location: Remote

Salary: £75,000- £85,000

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. 

We believe in a future of work in schools where being challenged doesn’t mean being burnt out and overworked. Where data guides progress without overwhelming staff. And where everyone working in a school is reminded why they got into education every day. 

Our MIS and school management tools are already making a difference in over 7,000 schools and trusts. Giving time and power back to staff, turning data into clear, actionable insights, and supporting happier working days. 

At the heart of our brand is a recognition that the challenges schools face today aren’t just about efficiency, outputs and productivity - but about creating happier working lives for the people who drive education everyday: the staff. We want to make schools more joyful places to work, as well as learn. 

We are looking for an experienced and collaborative Technical Product Manager to join our Engineering team and help us manage the product roadmap for our internal developer ecosystem. The remit and focus of the role is to understand developer pain points, define the requirements for a seamless "Golden Path" to production, and coordinate with specialised engineering teams (Platform, QA, Security) to ensure their "features" are integrated into a cohesive, high-quality pipeline. It’s a broad and exciting role, so we’re looking for someone up for a challenge - if you’re a good communicator and a team player, this is the role for you.

Core responsibilities

• User Discovery: Regularly interview developer squads to identify friction in the current GitHub/AWS workflow. What is slowing them down? Where are the bottlenecks?
• Feature Prioritization: Manage the backlog for DevEx. Decide when to prioritize a new automated security gate versus improving pipeline speed or onboarding a new testing tool.
• AI Adoption for Efficiency: Drive the adoption of AI-powered tools within the product and engineering organization to meet and exceed ambitious targets for efficiency gains.
• The IDP Journey: Act as the PO for the future Internal Developer Platform (IDP). You will manage the journey from initial PoC to a production-ready "SaaS-like" experience for our engineers.
• Cross-Team Coordination: You are the "Product Lead" who brings the specialized pieces together. You ensure the Platform Team’s IaC, the QA Team’s test suites, and Security’s scans are modular, functional, and default for the main pipelines.
• Governance & Standards: Define the "Definition of Done" for the deployment journey, ensuring all code moving to production is safe, secure, and maintained.
• Predictability & Flow: Lead the tracking of delivery performance across teams. You aren't managing the people; you are managing the flow of work and removing systemic blockers.
• Reporting: Utilize BI/Reporting tools to provide visibility into engineering productivity, lead times, and change failure rates.

• AI Enthusiast & Early Adopter: You possess a genuine passion for the evolving AI landscape. While you may not use AI in your current professional day-to-day, you experiment with LLMs and agents in your own time. You likely have a personal tech stack (e.g., leveraging Claude and Cursor for home projects) and are eager to bring that "inquiry mindset" to a professional environment.
• Experienced Product Leader: Proven track record in Product Management/Ownership or Technical Operations/Delivery Management within a high-scale SaaS environment.
• Platform Visionary: Experience taking a technical product from "Proof of Concept" to company-wide adoption, specifically navigating the lifecycle of an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) or similar project.
• Governance & Engineering Excellence: A strong orientation toward tooling, compliance, and engineering governance. You understand how to lead the transition from disjointed tools to a unified "Golden Path."
• Data-Driven Strategist: Proficiency with BI/Reporting tools and a history of using metrics (such as DORA or SPACE) to justify technical roadmaps and prove productivity gains.
• DevOps Fluent: Deep familiarity with modern DevOps patterns and the specific cultural and technical challenges of scaling engineering organisations.
  

Bonus Skills

• Hands-on Technical Curiosity: You aren't afraid to get your hands dirty. You might still write the occasional Python script, automation routine, or SQL query to unblock yourself or validate a hypothesis.
• Modern Tooling Proficiency: Experience or active experimentation with "AI-First" development tools such as Cursor, VS Code + Copilot, or Claude Dev.
• Hobbyist/Home Lab Experience: Whether it’s managing a Home Assistant setup, tinkering with Raspberry Pis, or building agents with LangChain, you have a "tinker" mindset that keeps your technical skills sharp outside of work.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Literacy: While you won't be the primary maintainer, a reading-level proficiency in Terraform, YAML, or Kubernetes manifests helps you communicate effectively with the engineering team.
• Prototyping Mindset: The ability to build "rough and ready" Proof of Concepts (POCs) to demonstrate value before committing engineering resources.

The chance to work alongside a team of hard-working, passionate people in a role where you’ll see the impact of your work everyday. We also offer:

• A dedicated wellbeing team who champion initiatives such as mindfulness, lunch n learns, manager training, mental health first aid training and much more!
• 32 days holiday (plus Bank Holidays). This is made up of 25 days annual leave plus 7 extra company wide days given over Easter, Summer & Christmas
• Life Assurance paid out at 3x annual salary
• Comprehensive wellness benefit provided by AIG Smart Health, which provides a 24/7 virtual GP service, Mental health support, Counselling, and personalised Health Checks 
• Private Dental Insurance with Bupa 
• Salary sacrifice Pension provided by Scottish Widows
• Enhanced maternity and adoption leave (20 weeks full pay) and paternity (6 weeks full pay) pay
• 5 free return to work maternity coaching sessions, helping you adapt to this new exciting time of life!
• Access to services such as Calm and Bippit (financial wellbeing coaching) 
• All of our roles champion flexible working and we are happy to discuss what this means to you
• Social committees that plan team, office and company wide events to bring people together and celebrate success
• Dedicated professional development training budget (CPD courses, upskilling resources, professional memberships etc)
• Volunteer with a charity of your choice for a day each year
• Dog friendly offices!

1. Phone screen
2. 1st stage
3. 2nd stage

We are committed to a fair and comfortable recruitment process, so if you require any reasonable adjustments during your application or interview process, please reach out to a member of the team at [email protected].

Our commitment is also backed by our partnership with Neurodiversity Consultancy, Lexxic who provide us with training, support and advice. 

Our goal is for Arbor to be a workplace which represents, celebrates and supports people from all backgrounds, and which gives them the tools they need to thrive - whatever their ambitions may be so we support and promote diversity and equality, and actively  encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. 

Know someone else who would be good for this role? You can refer a friend, family member or colleague, if they are offered a role with Arbor, we will say thank you with a voucher valued up to £200! Simply email: [email protected] 

Please note: We are unable to provide visa sponsorship at this time.