Group Product Manager

WRK digital; Sheffield; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

WRK digital seeks a Senior/Group Product Manager to lead the migration of a flagship platform to the cloud. You will own the product end-to-end, setting strategy over a rolling two-to-three year horizon and driving its commercial performance.

You will report to the Product Director and collaborate with Senior Product Owners across Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Operations and Finance. Expect strong decision authority within guardrails and no initial line management.

Qualifications

• Substantial product management experience in a complex software business.
• Experience modernising a large, legacy, on-premise product with live paying customers.
• Ability to weigh competing priorities and allocate limited resource with evidence-based decisions.
• Experience taking products to market alongside marketing, sales and customer success.

Responsibilities

• Set the product direction for the next two to three years and define what not to do.
• Own the commercial result: new customers, growth of existing customers, and cost to serve.
• Own the forecast and explain deviations, then fix them.
• Build a segmented view of users, buyers and signatories; monitor competitors.
• Decide what gets built using consistent criteria and assess its cost elsewhere.
• Split budget across growth, customer retention, tech debt, and platform health.
• Collaborate with marketing, sales and customer success on positioning, pricing and launches.
• Make unglamorous decisions like product mergers or decommissioning old offerings.
• Provide Senior Product Owners with clear goals, budgets and autonomy.

Skills

Product management

Strategic thinking

Cross-functional leadership

Go-to-market

Stakeholder management

Job description

WRK digital is partnered with a leading digital solutions provider to the education sector as they seek to hire a Senior/Group Product Manager to lead they migrate one of their flagship platforms to the cloud.

The role owns the product end-to-end. You will set its strategy over a rolling two-to-three year horizon, own its commercial performance, decide how investment is allocated, and lead the go-to-market and lifecycle decisions that turn that investment into measurable value.

You will report to the Product Director and work through Senior Product Owners, who own delivery within the outcomes and guardrails you set, alongside partners in Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Operations and Finance. There is no line management in year one, but real decision authority within agreed commercial, technical and regulatory guardrails - and an expectation that you use it.

What you'll be doing

• Setting the direction for your product over the next two to three years, and being clear about what you're choosing not to do
• Owning the commercial result: new customers, growing existing ones, keeping the ones you have, and what it costs to serve them
• Owning your forecast and explaining it when it slips and fixing it
• Building a properly segmented picture of who uses the products, who buys them and who signs, and keeping track of what competitors and alternatives are doing to your position
• Deciding what gets built and what doesn't, using criteria you apply consistently, and being honest about what each decision costs elsewhere
• Splitting a finite budget between new growth, keeping customers happy, paying down old problems and keeping the platform healthy
• Working with marketing, sales and customer success on how products are positioned, priced and launched - one plan, with clear owners
• Making the unglamorous decisions - merging products, moving customers off old ones, switching things off
• Giving Senior Product Owners a clear goal, a budget and the space to get on with it
• Bringing senior people with you, dealing well with disagreement, and making the call when there isn't an obvious consensus

What we're looking for

• Substantial product management experience in a complex software business with more than one product
• Experience modernising a large, legacy, on-premise product with live paying customers.
• Work you've led that crossed multiple departments and made a measurable difference to the business
• Decisions taken under commercial pressure - and the habit of going back afterwards to see how they turned out
• A solid understanding of subscription software: what makes customers stay, spend more, or cost too much to support
• The ability to weigh competing priorities and allocate limited resource, and to tell good evidence from weak
• Experience taking products to market alongside marketing, sales and customer success, including pricing decisions
• Experience of the later stages of a product's life - migrations and retirements, not just launches
• Comfort making decisions before you have the full picture, and the confidence to say what you won't be doing
• Willingness to change your mind in public when the evidence says so, and to stand behind a decision when it's questioned
• Comfort communicating with delivery teams, executive teams and customer alike, and an understanding of how to tailor your approach to each audience
• Genuine delegation - including when things get difficult and it would be easier to take the work back

No sector-specific background is required - outside perspective is actively encouraged.