Business Product Owner (Part Time, Fixed Term Contract)

Oxford University Press; Oxford; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days of holiday plus bank holidays

Pension contributions up to 12%

Access to loans and savings schemes

Local discounts

Discretionary annual payment

Job summary

Oxford University Press is seeking an experienced Business Product Owner to join their Digital Product Management team. This part-time role involves managing the delivery of new features and workflows to enhance the Division's core platform and content tools while maintaining a hybrid working policy requiring 2 days a week in the Oxford office.

The ideal candidate will have a proven track record in product ownership, Agile methodologies, and embedding change within teams. The position offers flexibility for working patterns and 25 days of holiday plus bank holidays.

Qualifications

• Proven success in a product owner role or equivalent.
• Experience with Agile methodologies and tools.
• Demonstrable experience in embedding change within teams.
• Knowledge of the education and publishing landscape.

Responsibilities

• Manage the delivery of new features for the core platform.
• Build relationships with stakeholders to align delivery plans.
• Monitor supplier delivery and track progress against timelines.
• Develop training materials and documentation for new features.

Skills

Product ownership experience

Agile methodologies

Change management

User journey definition

Communication skills

Technical understanding

Job description

We are looking for an experienced Business Product Owner to join the Digital Product Management team to accelerate the team's delivery of strategic projects. The role will manage the delivery of new features and workflows to enhance the Division's core platform and content tools.

Duties of the role will include:

• Manage the delivery of a set of new features to enhance the platform, coordinating development and ensuing process change with suppliers, the project team and internal stakeholders.
• Build strong relationships with publishers, editors, and colleagues within central functions to ensure priorities are understood and delivery plans are aligned.
• Represent customer and user needs so that the delivery team understands requirements and the customer context.
• Monitor the delivery by suppliers and strategic partners, ensuring progress against agreed timescales is tracked and any changes are understood by stakeholders.
• Collect and provide feedback on delivered features and changes, working in collaboration with Digital Product Managers, Product Designers and publishing colleagues.
• Create and implement roll-out plans for your feature set and associated process changes and present them to colleagues (Product Managers and other Business Product Owners) and stakeholders, to ensure changes are understood and supported.
• Develop training materials and documentation to support the product features and tools being delivered.
• Provide knowledge transfer and training to impacted teams for new features and tools.
• Work proactively to identify ways in which processes can be improved.
• Ensure engagement, alignment and buy-in from the wider product and delivery teams through regular touch points such as quarterly planning, demos and Product communications

This is a 12-month fixed term contract.

This is a part-time position working 28 hours per week.

We operate a hybrid working policy that requires a minimum of 2 days per week in the Oxford office.

About You

To be successful in this role, you will ideally have/be:

• Proven success in a product owner role or a digital delivery role (product manager, project manager, business analyst, platform manager etc.), working with delivery teams.
• Experience of working with Agile methodologies and tools.
• Demonstrable experience of successfully embedding change.
• Experience of planning and delivering continuous change and improvement in a digital product environment, including maintaining release plans.
• Knowledge of how to define, test, and refine user journeys.
• Skills in communication, networking and influencing within a matrix structure: to find a consensus and a way forward which balances needs.
• Knowledge of the education and publishing landscape.
• Basic level of technical understanding, including software architectures, standards, development methods and practices.
• Comfortable with utilising and interpreting data

We care about work/life balance here at OUP. With this in mind we offer 25 days’ holiday that rises with service, plus bank holidays and Christmas closure (3 days) and a 35-hour working week. We are open to discussing flexibility in respect to working patterns, dependent on role. We also have a great variety of active employee networks and societies.

We help make your money go further by contributing to your pension up to 12%, offering loans and savings schemes through our partnership with Salary Finance, in addition to travel to work schemes and access to a wide range of local discounts.

This role comes with the added benefit of a discretionary annual payment.

Please see our Rewards and Recognition page for more information.

We are committed to supporting diversity in our workforce, and ensuring an inclusive environment where all individuals can thrive. We seek to employ a workforce representative of the markets that we serve and encourage applications from all.