Principal Product Manager

Kainos; Birmingham; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a strategic leader to define product vision and drive innovation. This role involves shaping the long-term roadmap for software products, ensuring alignment with market needs, and fostering collaboration across teams. You will leverage your commercial mindset to maximize existing offerings while developing new solutions. Join a diverse and inclusive culture where your ideas are valued and contribute to transformative digital services that impact millions. If you're ready to make a significant impact and lead product evolution, this opportunity is for you.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in a senior product role, focusing on software products.
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills are essential.
• Ability to manage upwards and foster collaboration with teams.

Responsibilities

• Define product vision and strategy, ensuring timely execution.
• Engage with market trends to develop innovative solutions.
• Communicate effectively with senior management and teams.

Skills

Product Management

Communication Skills

Strategic Thinking

Negotiation Skills

Market Analysis

Tools

Automated Testing Frameworks

Software Testing

Job description

When you join Kainos, you get to think beyond limitations to make an immediate and positive impact – like transforming digital services for millions of citizens or helping Fortune 500 companies get live and thrive on Workday.

You’ll be part of a people-first culture that is growing around the world. We’re a creative, committed, and diverse group of individuals who succeed as a team. At Kainos your ideas are heard and valued and you’ll leave a legacy that you can feel proud of.Join us and discover how our people write our story.

Main purpose of the role & responsibilities in the business:

This role is responsible for defining the product vision, strategy, and long-term roadmap. You will own a product business plan and apply best-practice methodologies to translate the roadmap into the development of new products and/or associated services. Acting as a commercial 'Product CEO', you’ll also ensure we maximise the value of our existing offerings and drive adoption across our customer base and the wider market.

We’re looking for a strategic leader with a strong commercial mindset and a solid grasp of technology. You’ll be comfortable engaging with technical detail when needed, but your strength lies in stepping back to shape the broader vision. You’ll define long- and short-term investment priorities, drive execution with clarity, and ensure rigour in upfront thinking to deliver a strategy that’s robust, future-proof, and sets the direction for the next 2–3 years of product evolution.

Spending time in the market to understand customer problems, identify trends, and develop innovative solutions for broader business needs is an essential part of the role.

You must be able to communicate with all areas of the Workday Product Business in Kainos, particularly at more senior levels to communicate the strategy, update on progress, and to support leadership in making the right decisions quickly – you will need to be succinct, convincing, and show yourself as an expert in your area whilst demonstrating commercial awareness.

You’ll bring a clear understanding of the wider market landscape—translating trends, competitor movements, and customer priorities into actionable strategy. You’ll ensure we maintain an up-to-date, well-documented fact base that underpins decision-making across the business. Your insights will not only shape our product direction but also equip customer-facing teams with the context and confidence they need to succeed.

Based on a clear, agreed roadmap you need to be able to ensure timely execution, providing confidence to customer-facing teams and leadership. You will work with the development team to define release requirements. You will define the go-to-market strategy, own the value proposition, product positioning, key benefits, target customer, and defining and tracking KPIs. You will also serve as the internal and external evangelist for your product offering, building the external profile of Kainos and our offerings through key events, social media, thought leadership, as well as working with the sales channel and key customers.

Minimum (essential) requirements:

• A minimum of 6 years’ experience in a senior product role working on , analyzing, building, marketing, pricing and launching software products .

• Excellent communication skills are vital . You’ll need to be a persuasive and effective communicator with strong negotiating skills . It’s not only about talking, but you’ll also need to be able to listen, understand, and build on other’s viewpoints.

• I t will be particularly important to be able to demonstrate ability to communicate effectively with senior management, pitching with the right level of detail, helping drive fast decision-making, and providing confidence through reporting that is geared to the key (often commercially focused ) questions they have.

• You will be able to show yourself as a strategic thinker – able to understand the details and immediate priorities but rise above it to put together an overall product strategy, setting it within the wider market and business context , and focusing on the longer-term objectives , market positioning, and commercial impacts.

• You will need an eye for detail, particularly to interpret supplied information and understand sources and challenge where necessary.

• The ability to facilitate team meetings and group conversations.

• Relevant commercial experience and the ability to differentiate the technically interesting from the commercial priorities that solve the biggest business issues.

• Demonstrate you can manage upwards and step in as required take on a leader role in the Product Management team.

• Ability to ensure there is a good collaborative ‘buyer-supplier’ relationship in place with our development teams – where we constantly identify areas for enhancement and innovation, but where Product Management provides clarity of scope and outputs and manages to a plan.

• Have a proven track record of working closely with business analysts , product development leads/architects to advance functional and non-functional aspects of the product.

Desirable:

• Experience with Automated Testing Frameworks.

• Software Testing Experience.

• Services design experience and experience in developing services offerings and propositions.

About Kainos Smart:

Our cloud-based automated testing tool, Kainos Smart, is one of a kind. It is the only product that has been built exclusively for testing Workday. It is designed to make automated Workday testing easy for all users regardless of technical or testing background. With Smart you can quickly create repeatable tests covering Workday business processes, security configuration and integrations. Using Smart, our clients are saving thousands of man hours on testing and gaining much greater assurance on the correctness of their Workday deployment.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s write the next incredible chapter of our story together.

Embracing our differences

At Kainos, we believe in the power of diversity, equity and inclusion. We are committed to building a team that is as diverse as the world we live in, where everyone is valued, respected, and given an equal chance to thrive. We actively seek out talented people from all backgrounds, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, or any other characteristic that makes them who they are. We also believe every candidate deserves a level playing field. Our friendly talent acquisition team is here to support you every step of the way, so if you require any accommodations or adjustments, we encourage you to reach out. We understand that everyone's journey is different, and by having a private conversation we can ensure that our recruitment process is tailored to your needs.