Product Owner

Job Title: Product Owner

Salary: £35,000 - £45,500

Location: Gateshead, Cambridge, or Coventry/Hybrid

Contract: Permanent/Full Time (35 hours per week)

Are you passionate about working with multidisciplinary teams to develop and deliver new products and features that meet customer needs?

If you answered yes, we would love to hear from you as we are seeking a talented Product Owner to advance Cambridge Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM's) product strategy by owning and delivering the capabilities needed by our growing suite of customer-centric digital products for education both in the UK and internationally.

We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world-leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge.

About the role 

Working with colleagues across Cambridge CEM and wider Cambridge you will be responsible for the definition, prioritisation and acceptance of work done by delivery teams to deliver the platforms and capabilities required by CEM's digital educational products to ensure they deliver value to customers and for the business, including:

• working with Product Managers and other stakeholders to understand customer requirements and the business value we aim to deliver
• developing a deep understanding of how our customers use CEM platforms
• using qualitative techniques to understand customer needs and pain points and validate solutions
• prioritising, analysing and defining user stories, along with acceptance criteria, in the team backlog, translating business requirements into technical stories and vice versa
• using quantitative data to inform prioritisation, success criteria, evaluation and decision making
• working with UX/Design to ensure development of process maps, user journeys, wireframes and prototypes associated with user stories
• working with testers to ensure QA and acceptance of completed work in line with agreed acceptance criteria and fitness for use
• working with Service Delivery colleagues to ensure the service readiness for new products, including customer comms planning, providing training on new developments, making sure internal and external guidance is available

About you 

You are an experienced Product Owner with a track record and previous experience of delivering digital products. You'll have the ability to understand customer needs and have a proactive approach to problem solving. To be successful in this role, you will be motivated with a positive attitude and an enthusiasm to take on new challenges.  With your excellent interpersonal skills, you will enjoy interacting with a wide variety of people and collaborating as part of a team.

We'll be looking for demonstrable skills in the following areas:

• Working with customers to identify needs and validate solutions
• The ability to capture requirements, add details and describe user stories to teams
• Analysis skills with the ability to map processes or user journeys and associated wireframes
• Using metrics and data to inform decision making
• An understanding of digital technologies and software development
• Hands-on knowledge of Scrum and Kanban
• The motivation to take on new challenges and develop new skills

We're also looking for you to clearly outline your experience of:

• delivering digital product improvements
• working with cross-functional teams in an Agile environment
• backlog management, user story development and prioritisation with Agile development teams
• Working with UX designers
• Using data and evidence to make and justify decisions
• Experience of the schools/education market is desirable but not essential

Rewards and benefits

We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world-class, flexible rewards package, featuring family-friendly and planet-friendly benefits including:

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Group personal pension scheme
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Green travel schemes

We are a hybrid working organisation, and we offer a range of flexible working options from day one. We expect most hybrid-working colleagues to spend 40-60% of their time at their dedicated office or location. We will also consider other work arrangements if you wish to work more flexibly or require adjustments due to a disability. 

Ready to pursue potential? Apply now.  

We review applications on an ongoing basis. With a closing date for applications being Sunday 14^th April, however, this is a rolling campaign, and therefore we will conduct interviews as and when candidates apply. We reserve the right to close this vacancy once we have received sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested in this exciting opportunity, we encourage you to submit your application as early as possible.

Please note that successful applicants will be subject to satisfactory background checks including DBS due to working in a regulated industry.

Please note, Cambridge University Press & Assessment is unable to issue sponsorship under the Skilled Worker Visa route for this role as it does not meet the minimum skill and/or salary requirements.

Why join us

Joining us is your opportunity to pursue potential. You'll belong to a collaborative team that's exploring new and better ways to serve students, teachers and researchers across the globe – for the benefit of individuals, society and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development and progress, in an environment which embraces difference, change and aspiration.  

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it's safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together. We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background.

We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities.

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