Purpose of the post
At Health Data Research UK, we employ talented individuals who bring their own unique skills and experience to support our vision and benefit the whole team.
HDR UK requires the services of an experienced Product Owner to work within its technology team. You will work across a range of HDR UK technical solutions including the Health Data Research Gateway, the Disease Atlas, Researcher Registry, Phenotype Library, and Cohort Discovery. This is a highly visible and senior role, leading key areas of product development.
We would welcome applications both from individuals with a wealth of industry experience with enterprise level process and proficiency in design and strategy from any domain, or individuals with strong domain knowledge and project management in health data perhaps from an academic or biotech background. The role may also suit individuals looking to shift from academia to a more operational and enterprise role that lack previous product ownership and management experience, this may require a lower starting salary whilst requisite training and experience in product ownership are obtained. Regardless of your domain of experience, we are seeking an individual with a strategic mindset, a focus on innovation, exceptional communication and collaboration skills, and a demonstrable track record of successful project delivery.
You will be part of a multidisciplinary team that develops an over-arching interoperable infrastructure to ensure that UK health data assets are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reuseable (FAIR) and accessible for research, innovation and clinical trials. The successful candidate will be expected to play a leading role within an Agile software development team, providing strong product leadership of enhancements and new developments for infrastructure and services.
The successful postholder will manage a fast-paced pipeline of work, building partnerships with the NHS, industry and academic groups. This is a unique and exciting opportunity to work with key partners both within the Institute and externally and develop software, infrastructure and services that streamline access to health data for research and innovation that has the potential to transform lives.
Main responsibilities
Product Ownership:
- Drive successful assembling/development and adoption of technical solutions listening to stakeholder feedback and being driven by value added, user insights and metrics to achieve KPIs.
- Lead definition of the strategy, roadmap, features and stories for our technical portfolio, working with key internal and external stakeholders.
- Lead and manage the expectations of multiple stakeholders with different requirements and timelines.
- Define end-to-end user journeys to provide simple and compelling user experiences.
- Build feature roadmaps, maintain relevant product backlogs and prioritise.
- Manage stakeholder priorities aligned to product releases.
- Provide clarity to the delivery organisation on the structure and planning for releases, as well as all design and implementation acceptance sign-off.
- Work with software vendors and partners to ensure our requirements are incorporated into their roadmaps.
- Demonstrate the functionality of products to a range of research users with differing levels of technical expertise and support them with utilising the product.
- Maintain an in-depth technical knowledge of the product(s) the post is leading.
- Define acceptance criteria and validate the product delivery for robust implementation.
- Document product features, manuals to support users, and promotional materials.
- Support the drafting of relevant data governance and Data Protection Impact Assessment documents.
Team working and management:
- Line and career management of a small team of Business Analysts and UX/UI Designers.
- Building good relationships and rapport, working across internal and external teams.
Planning and organising:
- This post is embedded within HDR UK’s Technology Team and will require high levels of organisational skills and ability to work across organisational boundaries. The post-holder will need to effectively plan and deliver their work and support their direct reports but also be able to respond to changing needs in a fast-paced organisation.
Problem solving:
- The Product Owner will be expected to use problem solving skills to respond to diverse demands. As part of a wider team, the post holder will operate with significant independence. The post holder will require confidence and resilience in dealing with enquiries, problem solving, and decision making and will be expected to make effective judgements on when to escalate issues to senior colleagues.
Decision making:
- The post-holder will make all day-to-day operational decisions for their own workload.
Key contacts and relationships:
- The successful candidate will be part of the Technology Team, working collaboratively across the whole team including with key individuals such as the Chief Technology Officer, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, the Chief Data Solutions Architect, the Technical Programme Director responsible for the software team, the Senior Technical Programme Manager, UX/UI Designers and Business analysts.
- The successful candidate will collaborate externally with NHS partners, Biomedical Research Centres, Universities, Trusted Research Environments/Secure Data Environments/data providers and end-users, the HDR UK development community, 3rd party system integrators, software vendors, HDR partners, Data and Analytics Research Environments UK (DARE UK), British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre and Health Data Research UK hubs.
- The post holder will also work closely with the Infrastructure & Services Director and the Data Standards Project Manager.
Knowledge, Skills and Experience
- A leader with experience gained in a large complex organisation.
- Minimum of five years of experience in a Product Owner role in industry or equivalent and/or five years working in project management in the health data technology domain or equivalent.
- Demonstrable success in delivering multiple concurrent programmes of work.
- Experience working with development partners to achieve product delivery.
- Experience in building long-term relationships/partnerships with different organisations with the ability to negotiate and influence effectively.
- Demonstrable effectiveness at engaging stakeholder communities, understanding their needs, and defining and documenting requirements.
- Understanding of technical complexity to feed into feasibility and prioritisation of designs and feature changes.
- A passion for user-centred design.
- Experience of working directly with senior leaders, working effectively with humility and confidence.
- Experience in agile methodologies and/or working with agile teams.
- Experience using Confluence, JIRA, Trello and similar Agile project management tools.
- Experience of writing user stories, technical tasks, reports, funding applications and presentations.
- Excellent organisational skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- In depth understanding of enterprise architecture concepts, agile system, product ownership, and development project management.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to inspire and lead others at all levels and to explain concepts without technical jargon.
- Experienced in leading a multidisciplinary team of direct and in-direct reports.
- Ability to work as part of a team, work autonomously and make decisions without supervision.
Please note, as we are a UK-based organisation, applicants must be living in, and eligible to work in, the UK. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.
We politely request no contact from recruitment agencies or media sales. We do not accept speculative CVs from recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.
