Product Owner

Do you thrive in an intellectually stimulating environment that rewards curiosity and innovation?

Are you committed to the highest quality in your work and do you enjoy working with passionate people of the same mindset?

Do you want to help eliminate animal testing in the development of medicines and cosmetics?

About Us:

We are an award-winning registered charity and not-for-profit organisation driven by our purpose to enable informed decision making on chemical safety. Recognised around the world, our cutting-edge scientific software solutions solve critical chemical safety assessment problems enabling scientists to make better decisions when developing new medicines, chemical products and cosmetics. As an educational charity we provide public benefit through reducing the need for animal testing, streamlining the drug development process and safeguarding human health.

About You:

Youll be someone who wants to make a real difference in the world by creating computer systems that are designed to reduce animal testing, provide scientists with information to advance their research and, ultimately, get new medicines and chemical products to market more safely and quickly. Youll enjoy learning about new areas of science and relish the challenge of collaborating with colleagues from research, software engineering and customer facing teams to turn complex scientific concepts into elegant software products.

Youll have experience as a Product Owner in agile software development, be confident and professional collaborating with people from all levels and job roles across the organisation and are able to be a leader taking ownership of product development from conception to release.

About the Role:

As a Product Owner you will own the development of a Lhasa product from conception through delivery and ongoing future development. You will collaborate daily with stakeholders including customers, scientists, software engineers, delivery managers and technical architects in delivering software for use in Life Sciences that is both cutting edge and world class. You will play a key role in shaping the strategic direction of our products, ensuring they continue to meet our customers needs.

Youll be responsible for:

Product Strategy

• Developing and owning the product vision, outcomes and delivery strategy
• Creating and maintaining a Roadmap for product delivery that provides a clear direction for the delivery team and ensures alignment with the companys strategic goals
• Providing regular updates to the Head of Solutions, the Senior Leadership Team and the wider company on product status, milestones and upcoming releases

Product Delivery

• Taking a lead on collecting, clarifying and fully understanding customer needs creating requirements for features and enhancements
• Developing, prioritising and managing a product backlog of features and enhancements ensuring appropriate level of detail, acceptance criteria and UI design for each item.
• Facilitating backlog refinement and sprint planning meetings with the delivery team, making informed decisions around scope, priorities and compromises to keep delivery against defined outcomes on track.

Youll succeed by:

• Being inquisitive and curious about the work we do
• Being open, collaborative and respectful in interactions with colleagues and customers
• Communicating timely and appropriately about plans, successes and issues / risks
• Ensuring the delivery team is clear about what needs to be achieved by when and why
• Keeping the product backlog well stocked, detailed appropriately and prioritised
• Identifying and attending training courses to improve technical and soft skills

Education and Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent, preferably in a relevant scientific discipline
• Training / certification in agile delivery, product ownership, product management, business analysis or similar.

Skills and Knowledge

Essential:

• Broad understanding and practical experience of agile software development and the role of the Product Owner:
  • Creating User Stories and writing acceptance criteria
  • Milestone / release planning
  • Backlog management and prioritisation
  • Facilitating backlog refinement and planning sessions with teams
• Knowledge and experience of requirements gathering, analysis and modelling gained through either business analysis, user research or user experience approaches
• Ability to take ownership and accountability and hold others to account
• Ability to identify risks and issues and to propose and implement mitigating actions
• Able to build effective working relationships with internal and external stakeholders
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Able to quickly adapt to ambiguous and changing circumstances

Personal Characteristics

• Confident, personable, trustworthy and professional
• Ability to work as part of a team and independently as required
• Proactive, seeks continuous improvement and a desire to make a difference
• Espouses company values: Ownership, Collaborative, Integrity, Diversity & Inclusivity, and Curiosity & Adaptability
• Has a can-do mindset