Product Manager - FCDO - SEO

Location

London, Milton Keynes or East Kilbride - You will be required to work from this location in line with FCDO policies on Hybrid Working (minimum 60% in the office).

About the job

Job summary

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office pursues our national interests and projects the UK’s role in the world. We promote the interests of British citizens, safeguard the UK’s security, defend our values, reduce poverty and tackle global challenges with our international partners. We employ more than 17,000 staff in 179 countries and territories, across our diplomatic and development offices worldwide, which consists of 282 officially designated Posts. Our UK-based staff work in King Charles Street, London, Abercrombie House in East Kilbride and in Milton Keynes.

Job description

You will be joining FCDO at a time of transformation with the opportunity to shape digital tools to support front line delivery. As we transition our internal systems, land new digital products and expand the scope of some of our existing digital platforms, we are building an expanded product function to design and integrate our products, spot efficiencies in existing processes and continuously improve our digital services to provide the best user experience.

As a Product Manager, you will lead and be responsible for a group of digital products. Working with multi-disciplinary teams across the Directorate, you will apply knowledge of our customers and business goals to frame problems and set priorities for the development of new products. You will build strong relationships with FCDO programme and policy staff across our overseas networks and central teams to support internal communications, use feedback to evaluate our products and to help the FCDO achieve its goals in a more efficient and effective way.

Importantly, you will also care about the people our services deliver experiences for and define what success looks like for them. 

You will work in an innovative Digital, Data and Technology team, exposed to methods and frameworks that will allow you to build a knowledge base to accelerate your career. 10% of your time will be for learning and development; you will have access to resources through the FCDO's International Academy and the Government Digital Service, which cover on-the-job learning, coaching/mentoring and formal training.

Roles and Responsibilities

All the roles will be responsible for building out new platforms for FCDO and understanding how we get best value out of them across the organisation. The roles will focus on the following platforms:

1. Digital Products and Services: We create and continuously improve the digital products that underpin the FCDO’s global mission – from responding to crises and supporting British nationals overseas to driving international development and hosting major diplomatic events.  Our portfolio includes tools such as products for managing official visits and high‑level engagements, knowledge and content platforms, and data and insight solutions.
2. Live service products including end user devices and applications, networks and infrastructure. This includes hardware such as laptops, desktops and mobiles and applications such as ServiceNow and M365 including co-pilot and in house developed applications for use across the FCDO.
3. Consular Products: This includes a diverse portfolio of public facing digital services for example applying for an Emergency Travel Document, or contacting the FCDO for Consular Assistance, as well as the products used by our overseas network to directly support their Consular work such as our core case management platform, and appointment booking system.

The successful candidate will:

• Have ownership of Products – creating and communicating a strategy, managing our digital products through discovery, design and completion.
• Oversee product development work – acting as Scrum Master to coordinating work across Agile multidisciplinary teams, using, for example DevOps and/or Kanban tools.
• Apply user-focused design – using user research and business analysis to determine customer needs and prioritise software development work.
• Problem solve – devising strategic rather than short-term tactical digital solutions, identifying efficiencies in our products and understanding how each contributes to the programme delivery space.
• Evaluate digital products – defining measures of success against Delivery Platform strategy and business requirements.

Please note that some roles may have line management responsibilities.

You will be required to travel between the UK offices every month, to collaborate with colleagues. Overseas travel is likely to be infrequent, and duration of the trip will depend on location.

Person specification

You must be a British Citizen at the time of application and, if invited to interview, you will need to bring proof of identity (British Passport/Driving Licence etc.) with you.

This role requires you to attain Developed Vetting (DV) security clearance.

For more information about this process, click here. Attaining DV will require you to have been resident in the UK for five of the last ten years. At least one year of this must have been a consecutive twelve-month period. Serving overseas with HM Forces, in some other official capacity as a representative of His Majesty’s Government or having lived overseas as a result of your parents’ or partner’s Government employment counts as UK residency for the purposes of security clearances.

It is essential in your application that you provide evidence and proven examples in each of the following Minimum Criteria, the Behaviours and the Technical question as far as you are able to do so. These responses will be further developed and discussed with those candidates invited for interview.

Minimum Criteria

Demonstratable track record of delivery the following Technical skills from the Product Manager profession section of the UK Government’s Digital and Data and Profession Capability Framework.   

1. Product Management, practitioner level- you can:

• work with your team to investigate and validate what adds value now and what could add value in future
• create a prioritised roadmap and use it to discuss your product strategy with stakeholders
• address uncertainty while managing scope, ensuring critical deadlines are met and value delivered
• recommend a range of product management methods
• work in the open and share your work

2. Agile and lean practices, practitioner level- you can:

• compare and select the most appropriate delivery methods and processes
• recognise, reflect and adapt when something does not work, encouraging experimentation
• use a blended approach depending on the context
• help teams to measure, evaluate and visualise outcomes
• encourage reflective practice to improve ways of working

3. Applying user-centred insights, practitioner level- you can:

• use user insights to represent users in internal discussions
• advocate for research to be completed with all types of users of the product or service
• use user needs to agree the work that needs to be done and determine priorities with the team
• work with others to understand and recommend tools to get the appropriate user insight

4. Life cycle management, working level- you can:

• manage the delivery of products and services that add value through different phases of the life cycle, with some support
• identify if the product or service should move to the next phase and, if it should, how to do this
• ensure the product or service is developed in line with the appropriate service standards for a phase
• use new information to adapt approaches to life cycle management

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Changing and Improving
• Seeing the Big Picture

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Product Management (Practitioner Level)
• Agile and lean practices (Practitioner Level)