Lead Product Owner

JOB TITLE: Lead Product Owner

SALARY: £104,992 - £123,520

LOCATION: Manchester or Halifax

HOURS: Full-time

WORKING PATTERN: Our work style is hybrid, which involves spending at least two days per week, or 40% of our time, at one of our office site listed above.

About this opportunity

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Lead Product Owner to join the Colleague Channels Platform.

You'll report to the Business Platform Lead and support us in building our capability to improve customer and colleague journeys in customer facing and operational areas across our Consumer teams.

We’re driving transformation through advanced technology and AI-powered solutions. You’ll lead a large, collaborative team blending product and technology expertise to deliver innovative solutions at scale. You’ll have a strong understanding of AI, ideally with experience in delivering AI-enabled products or services.

As Lead Product Owner, you’ll act as a visionary and a collaborative leader, driving clarity on the What and Why across your teams. In partnership with your Engineering Lead (who focuses on the How), you’ll shape and prioritise the change delivered into the Platform to ensure we deliver meaningful outcomes for the wider Group.

About us…

We’re on an exciting journey and there couldn’t be a better time to join us. The investments we’re making in our people, data, and technology are leading to innovative projects, fresh possibilities, and countless new ways for our people to work, learn, and thrive.

What you’ll do

• Lead and empower a large, cross-functional team in partnership with the Lab Engineering Lead, whilst setting the standard across the Lab and inspiring delivery.
• Be responsible for the Product Roadmap and define the product vision and strategy; shaping and prioritise epics, features and stories.
• Ensure end to end change compliance for the overall Product, including governance and working with stakeholders on business readiness (training, communications, adoption). You’ll reduce risk through a full understanding of the control environment alongside experimentation, data‑driven learning, and robust governance.
• Support the development of objectives and key results and provide clear product performance and value realisation insights.
• Shape key business artefacts e.g. business cases, skills and capacity plans, delivery and technology roadmaps and input into business 4YOP, Consumer strategy cycles, and technology roadmaps.
• Deputise for Business Platform Lead or other Lab PO’s on cross-cutting platform topics.

What you’ll need

Product Ownership - Strong experience in driving strategic data product delivery, platform modernisation, and transformation‑led change. Accountable for a complex platform backlog, leading multi‑disciplinary engineering, data, and analytics teams to deliver improvements of varying size and complexity.

Stakeholder Management - Effectively manages internal and external stakeholders—quickly establishing credibility and trust. Anticipates conflict, shapes stakeholder viewpoints, and maintains commitment to both near‑term migration milestones and long‑term strategic objectives.

Customer Centricity - Confidence acting as the voice of the customer, ensuring their needs shape your product direction.

Leadership - Use sound judgement and experience to guide teams through complex and sometimes ambiguous transformation work. Model ethical leadership, accountability, and curiosity, and support teams through change with deep listening and clarity. Ability to create empowered, autonomous and purposeful teams.

Collaboration & Coaching - A passion for coaching and developing other Product Owners to build a strong product community. Ability to motivate teams, challenge the status quo and apply first‑principles thinking.

AI - You’ll have a solid grasp of AI concepts, ideally with experience in delivering AI-enabled products or services.

About working for us

Our ambition is to be the leading UK business for diversity, equity and inclusion supporting our customers, colleagues and communities and we’re committed to creating an environment in which everyone can thrive, learn and develop.

We were one of the first major organisations to set goals on diversity in senior roles, create a menopause health package, and a dedicated Working with Cancer Initiative.

We offer reasonable workplace adjustments for colleagues with disabilities, including flexibility in office attendance, location and working patterns. And, as a Disability Confident Leader, we guarantee interviews for a fair and proportionate number of applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the role with a disability, long-term health or neurodivergent condition through the Disability Confident Scheme.

We provide reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process to reduce or remove barriers. Just let us know what you need.

We also offer a wide-ranging benefits package, which includes:

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%

• An annual performance-related bonus

• Share schemes including free shares

• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping

• 30 days’ holiday, with bank holidays on top

• A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies

If you’re excited by the thought of becoming part of our team, get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!