Value Stream Product Owner

We’re 1st Central, a market-leading insurance company utilising smart data and technology at pace. Rapid growth has been based on giving our 1.4 million customers exactly what they want: great value insurance with an excellent service. And that’s the same for our colleagues too; we won Insurance Employer of the Year at the British Insurance Awards 2024 and our Glassdoor score is pretty mega too!

We’re on the hunt for a Value Stream Product Owner to join our Technology and Data team.

As a Value Stream Product Owner, you’ll be accountable for driving the success of the product, focusing on maximising the ROI that your product delivers and maintaining a compliant ‘healthy’ product. A key responsibility in this role is to develop and own the product vision and roadmap ensuring alignment to the Value Stream vision, wider business vision and objectives. You’ll collaborate closely with the Head of Value Stream and wider business stakeholders & SMEs to define and prioritise product requirements to build your product backlog.  

You’ll draw on your knowledge of the product and your wider SME expertise to identify the needs of your product, understand the business value and work across the business pillars to maximise delivery of outcomes. A key responsibility of this role is working with your cross functional delivery team driving ownership and empowerment to deliver a high quality and performing product.  

We value flexible working arrangements, so you can choose to work remotely or maybe you live within a commutable distance from one of our offices in Salford Quays, Manchester, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, or Guernsey, and want to work in the office occasionally.  

Core skills were looking for to succeed in the role:  

• Excellent leadership and motivational skills  

• Decisive decision making and proactive approach to problem solving using analytical thinking and emotional intelligence.  

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to present information in a clear and concise manner to a variety of audiences, both technical and non-technical  

• Excellent communication and presentation skills, both verbal and written 

• Strong interpersonal skills  

• Excellent time management and organisation skills   

• Great at building strong, effective relationships with people from different disciplines. 

What’s involved:  

• You’ll be accountable for maximizing the ROI of the technical product and balancing different types of demand, ensuring the right levels of technical debt are managed whilst ensuring product stability, resilience, security, scalability and performance are as per agreed service levels 

• You'll define and communicate the product vision, strategy and roadmap in collaboration with HoVSs, business and change stakeholders and product delivery team  

• You'll conduct market research to analyse industry trends and identify opportunities for product enhancements and innovation in alignment with business plans and objectives 

• You’ll be responsible for aligning product goals with the wider business outcomes supported by the Head of Value Streams and Solution Architecture  

• You’ll create and maintain the product backlog ensuring it is well defined, organised and properly prioritised in line with the CDF 

• You'll act as the SME for your product responsible for making product decisions 

• You'll breakdown Epics, with support from Architecture and your product delivery team into features with appropriate acceptance criteria 

• You’ll support your product delivery team in breaking features into user stories and development tasks for effective execution  

• You’ll work closely with your product delivery team in an agile environment playing an active role in PI planning, Sprint planning, backlog refinements, sprint stand ups and retros 

• You’ll work closely with your Agile Data Delivery Lead and Principal Data Engineers to support delivery across the release cycle 

• You'll work with the Test Practice with the responsibility of signing off the product and release prior to live deployment   

• You’ll drive your product delivery team to meet product KPIs 

• You'll conduct regular meetings and presentations to update stakeholders on the product’s progress, upcoming features and roadmap changes 

• You'll construct meaningful release content for company wide release notes highlighting changes to the product and useful information about the impact that changes will deliver 

• You’ll effectively own and manage product(s) risks, controls and mitigations in line with InfoSec, Governance, Data Protection and compliance related standards, frameworks and processes 

• You’ll ensure the Product(s) have a clear set of maintained NFRs  

• You’ll maintain robust controls over Product level spend, product delivery team efficiency and Product value optimization 

• Any other reasonable duties as required, including out-of-hours supporting of Releases, Product support.  

Experience & Knowledge 

• Considerable experience in data delivery and working with delivery teams in a product aligned model  

• Working knowledge of the product/and or SME knowledge of the capabilities and features associated with the product 

• Strengths in combining rigour and discipline with a pragmatic approach to deliver the highest quality, cost effective features within set timeframes  

• Excellent stakeholder management experience, can handle conflicting stakeholder requirements and bring differing points of view together to move them forward 

• Good understanding of regulatory requirements specific to the Company and the functions under control 

Skills 

• Excellent leadership and motivational skills  

• Decisive decision making and proactive approach to problem solving using analytical thinking and emotional intelligence.  

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to present information in a clear and concise manner to a variety of audiences, both technical and non-technical  

• Excellent communication and presentation skills, both verbal and written 

• Strong interpersonal skills  

• Excellent time management and organisation skills   

• Great at building strong, effective relationships with people from different disciplines. 

Qualifications 

• Agile qualifications   

Behaviours  

• Target driven, results focused, striving to drive improvements across the change and delivery pipeline   

• Strategic thinker  

• Self-motivated and enthusiastic 

• An organised and proactive approach 

• Flexible approach to work and adopts a positive attitude, embracing, embedding, and incorporating the Company values 

• Strives to drive business improvements to contribute to the success of the business 

• Influence and contribute to strategic decision making, ensuring that deliver of change is aligned to business priorities 

So, if you’re up for the challenge and would like to join our vibrant and busy team, we want to hear from you today.

What can we do for you?

People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here. 

Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.