Engineering Product Manager

As the Engineering Product Manager, you’ll be working closely with GDS’s experts in software engineering, site reliability engineering, technical architecture and cyber security. Together you’ll identify opportunities for GDS’s operations to be improved, and be part of determining the value, cost and priority of each opportunity. You’ll identify the areas where changed user behaviour will be critical to adoption, and use your product craft to understand both our developers and how they work, ensuring we choose the approaches most likely to succeed.

On other more project-like work led by the technical experts, you’ll provide some product mindset coaching where needed. You’ll also work with delivery colleagues to minimise work-in-progress and encourage early an agile mindset and rapid learning.

As a Product Manager you’ll:

• work with a multidisciplinary team to deliver the product and iteratively improve it through several cycles
• develop an expert understanding of the users’ needs and behaviours, championing these in the delivery of your product
• define, explain and iterate an evidence-based product vision that is compelling to your users, team and stakeholders
• maintain a roadmap and product strategy that show your strategic plans at different horizons and granularities
• develop and prioritise a product backlog, writing good user stories and making decisions based on evidence and value for money
• identify assumptions and risks behind possible approaches and include these in your product planning
• collaborate with team members to create prototypes or other cheap ways to test these assumptions or approaches - at both a strategic and usability level
• safely use ‘test and learn’ approaches where the cost and risks of being wrong about a particular technology choice are low
• engage with users and stakeholders through a range of channels to encourage take-up and use of your product
• build services according to the government service standard, and following the principles in the service manual
• change your approach according to the lifecycle phase of each product
• understand the context of different programmes across GDS, and make sensible adoption plans
• set measurable goals for your product and report against these to demonstrate progress against stated benefits
• develop support and operations processes
• share insight with leadership at an appropriate time to ensure the programme strategy can adapt and have the best chance of success
• support the vision, roadmaps and delivery of other products in your programme and GDS
• create, curate and iterate documentation for our tooling, working with content designers where necessary to update ‘The GDS Way’
• play an active role in the government product manager community, sharing your learning and celebrating progress made by other people and teams.

Initially the peers in your team will consist of a Lead Technical Architect, a Site Reliability Engineer, and a Delivery Manager shared with Cybersecurity. You will also have regular access to and advice from the Technical Leadership of GDS, including the Heads of Profession for Software Engineering, Technical Architecture, SRE. You will also spend considerable time with SCS colleagues - GDS’s CTO and (once appointed) CISO.

Person specification

We’re interested in people who:

• have experience of developing and releasing digital products with proficiency in agile product management techniques, such as: roadmaps; prioritisation; creation of user stories; MVP definition; using research, analytics and insight to inform decisions; planning at different horizons; 
• understand of the variety of disciplines involved in digital delivery, including engineering, service design, performance analysis and user research, developed through working in multidisciplinary teams
• interest in working on products or platforms used by developers
• can interrogate a technical vision, and work with teams turn it into an agile adoption plan
• can reconcile strong differing technical opinions using evidence or user research
• can evaluate return on investment/value for money on different approaches
• can identify assumptions or risks to adoption and collaboratively come up with ways to test them with end users
• can design and carry out their own user research where necessary, following good practice
• familiarity with setting, monitoring and reporting measurable performance objectives
• can use data and analytics to spot problems with, and evaluate success of, new features or any experiments
• effective verbal, written and visual communication skills, that you are able to tailor to the needs of the audience, including senior leadership
• can devise communication strategies and engagement plans that drive adoption at the right pace for current confidence levels

Benefits

The benefits of working at GDS

There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:

• flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
• a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
• 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
• an extra day off for The King’s birthday
• an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
• career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
• paid volunteering leave
• a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
• job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
• advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
• death in service benefits
• cycle to work scheme and facilities
• access to children's holiday play schemes across different locations in central London
• access to an employee discounts scheme
• 10 learning days per year
• volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
• access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning

GDS offers hybrid working for all employees. This means that everyone does some working from home and also spends some time in their local office. You’ll agree to your hybrid working arrangement with your line manager in line with your preferences and business needs.

Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

Things you need to know

The standard selection process for roles at GDS consists of:

• a simple application screening process - We only ask for a CV and cover letter of up to 750 words. Important tip - please ensure that your cover letter includes how you meet the skills and experience listed in the “person specification” section above
• a 60 minute video interview. This will include giving your response to a typical Product Management scenario, to help us understand and ask about your product thinking. We will assess your experience of the priority DDaT skills and the three Behaviours set out below.
• for successful candidates at the first round, there will then be a 90 minute in-depth interview of all DDaT skills. This will also enable us to better determine the salary we can offer, which roles might be suitable to you, as well as starting to plan your career development.

The scenario for the first interview, and instructions on how to prepare a response, will normally be sent approximately three days in advance. No presentation will be necessary, although candidates may choose to create one. Candidates can also refer to notes. 

Information about how to prepare for the DDaT skills assessment will be sent five days in advance, and referring to your notes is expected at this stage.

Depending on how many applications we get, there might also be an extra stage before the video interview, for example a phone interview or a technical exercise.

In the Civil Service, we use Success Profiles to evaluate your skills and ability. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, increases performance and improves diversity and inclusivity. We’ll be assessing your technical abilities, skills, experience and behaviours that are relevant to this role.

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours:

• changing and improving
• making effective decisions
• delivering at pace

We’ll also be assessing your experience and specialist technical skills against the following skills defined in the Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework for the Product Manager role: 

• Product ownership
• Agile working
• User focus
• Strategic ownership
• Financial ownership
• Life cycle perspective
• Operational management
• Problem management
• Working within constraints
• DDaT perspective

Candidates should expect questions on the initial 3-4 skills during the first interview.

Candidates that do not pass the interview but have demonstrated an acceptable standard may be considered for similar roles at a lower grade.

In the event of an extremely large number of applicants, we will sift only on the criteria of “Product Ownership” and “User focus”.

A reserve list will be held for a period of 12 months, from which further appointments can be made.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability status.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.