Senior Product Manager - Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - G7

Location

Swansea

About the job

Job summary

Are you a strong product leader who enjoys taking responsibility and pushing boundaries?

Do you have a passion for development and delivery?

If so, we would love to hear from you.  

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays a privilege day for the King’s birthday
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below!

Find out more about what it's like working at DVLA roles: Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - Department for Transport Careers

Job description

You will have recent experience and knowledge of product management techniques and will have a strong technical focus.  You will have had the experience, responsibility and ownership of the entire product technology stack throughout the life of a product. You will have had responsibility for not only developing new functionality for your product but also prioritising ensuring the product is operationally healthy and is kept up to date to limit and remove security vulnerabilities proactively. 

You’ll be adept at creating, owning and delivering complex technical product roadmaps, breaking down barriers for your team, planning at a high level and getting into the detail to make things happen when needed.  You can balance and prioritise change initiatives, technical changes, support, maintenance and other tasks to maximise the value of the of development work being undertaken.

You will work directly with development squad(s) on a day-to-day basis, providing guidance and leadership, and ensuring there is a shared understand of the outcomes and objectives that the product, project or change being delivered.  You will also protect the team from outside distractions to ensure the team is providing constant value.

You will facilitate the development and continuous improvement of the product, turning the vision into reality. You will ensure the team deliver the vision in the most effective way, whilst building something that is reusable and transformational.  

As a Senior Product Manager you will manage multiple products or a single product that is especially complex, high-risk or sensitive through multi-disciplinary, highly skilled digital squads.  

You will work closely will programme and change teams to understand the change pipeline and agree and prioritise the initiatives in line with the existing product roadmap.  

You will also collaborate with service and business colleagues to understand the user needs and objectives required to ensure successful outcomes. 

You will collaborate closely with architecture teams to develop designs and solutions to meet the desired outcomes of change initiatives to ensure any development meets DVLA standards and best practices. 

You will be responsible for line management, development and coaching of Agile Delivery Manager(s) who manage the development squads and ensuring that they are set up successfully to deliver the product backlog. You will provide the escalation route through to the Head of Product and ensure the consolidated delivery of technical change across multiple squads. You will have had previous experience of people management.

You will be confident challenging approaches within and outside of the squads and be a positive role model of the values, attitudes and behaviours of the capability. You will facilitate focus on the delivery of the technical outcomes, manage dependencies, identify and manage priorities and ensure the successful delivery of the technical products. You will need to have strong communication skills and will engage with senior stakeholders at all levels to support the effective delivery of those products and services.

As part of this you will already hold or be willing to work towards appropriate development / qualifications to achieve professional standards of technical product management, for example Certified Scrum Product Owner or higher.

Responsibilities  

Your responsibilities will include but will not be limited to: 

• Lead products through different phases of the product life cycle, from discovery, through development, delivery and continuous improvement, to retirement.
• Manage associate product managers and product managers.
• Make decisions based on the overall quality and value of your products.
• Being involved in hiring associates, product managers and contractors

For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile.

Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

Would you like to find out more about the role, the digital team and what it’s like to work at DVLA? If so, we are organising a familiarisation session where you can virtually 'meet the team' on Wednesday 29th July at 12pm. 

Please click here to book on.

Person specification

Required experience:

To be successful in this role you will need to have the following experience:

• This role requires strong product leadership and the ability to understand the impact actions have on the organisation.
• The successful candidates will have experience of driving a positive team culture, supporting professional development and able to motivate teams to be fully engaged in their work.
• As a leader it’s important that you can be a strong advocate for continuous professional development and be an ambassador for changing culture across government.
• You should have experience in delivering digital products and services and be able to balance multiple priorities, including the successful use of agile methodologies.
• You will have a sound understanding of the digital landscape and be professionally curious taking an interest in the wider community and always looking at the big picture.
• You will be able to adapt to working in a changeable fast-paced environment, working at scale with complex products.  
• The role holder will create and own the product's technical vision and roadmap that delivers the Agency's technical strategy and standards.