Product Leads - Platforms

Rowden; Bristol; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative company in the engineering sector is seeking Product Leads to shape complex IT platforms. This role involves collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to align user needs with mission priorities, ensuring delivery aligns with architectural integrity. You will be embedded with government customers, requiring strong communication and the ability to build trust in complex environments. This position typically involves hybrid working, with a flexible approach to meet the needs of the team and customers. If you enjoy solving challenging problems and want to make a significant impact, this opportunity is for you.

Qualifications

• Experience as a product owner in complex enterprise environments.
• Strong communication skills to bridge technical and operational domains.

Responsibilities

• Own and articulate the product vision and roadmap for platform delivery.
• Translate business needs into clear user stories and backlog items.

Skills

Product Ownership

Agile Delivery

Communication Skills

Requirements Gathering

User-Centered Design

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Job description

Department: Engineering

Location: Bristol, UK

Description

We’re building the next UK-headquartered engineering powerhouse.


At Rowden, we design and integrate advanced systems that sense, connect, and protect data in challenging environments where quick decisions are vital. Our solutions use intelligent automation to enhance speed and efficiency and are built to be reliable and straightforward for critical operations in remote or high-pressure settings.

Headquartered in Bristol (UK), we combine modern engineering methods with cutting-edge commercial technology to create adaptable, mission-critical systems. We focus on solving the tough challenges that others overlook, ensuring our customers can operate effectively in an ever-changing world.

About the Role


We are seeking Product Leads to shape the vision, direction, and definition of complex IT platforms in close partnership with our customers. These roles sit at the intersection of delivery, design, and operations serving as the voice of the customer to our engineering teams, and the trusted partner to customer Product Owners.

Product Leads at Rowden own the ‘why’ and shape the ‘what’ ensuring we’re solving the right problems in the right way. You’ll work across a multi-disciplinary team to align user needs with mission priorities, translate goals into deliverable outcomes, and keep the roadmap focused on value. You’ll collaborate closely with Technical Leads to ensure delivery aligns with architectural direction and design integrity.

You will be embedded with our government customers and collaborate closely with delivery and engineering at Rowden. These roles require strong communication, curiosity, and the ability to build trust quickly in complex environments. If you thrive in ambiguity, like solving hard problems, and want to work on projects that matter, we’d love to hear from you.

This role typically involves hybrid working with regular time embedded on customer sites and at Rowden’s Bristol HQ. Candidates must be willing to obtain a UKNSV security clearance with SC being essential, and DV clearance desirable.

Key areas of responsibility

• Own and articulate the product vision and roadmap for platform delivery, aligned to mission outcomes.
• Act as the key interface with the customer Product Owner, shaping shared understanding of priorities and goals.
• Continuously gather insights from users, stakeholders and operators to evolve requirements and improve product-market fit.
• Translate business and operational needs into clear user stories, epics, and backlog items.
• Maintain and prioritise the platform backlog, making evidence-based decisions and trade-offs to maximise value.
• Lead backlog refinement and sprint planning with delivery teams, ensuring clarity and focus.
• Work closely with Programme Delivery Leads and Technical Leads to manage dependencies, align delivery cadence, and de-risk execution.
• Represent Rowden in customer forums with clarity, empathy and confidence.
• Champion agile and user-centred delivery practices throughout the product lifecycle.
  
  

Key skills, experience and behaviours

Essential

• Strong experience in a product owner or product lead role within complex enterprise infrastructure or platform environments.
• Track record of working closely with customers to shape, capture and refine requirements.
• Solid grounding in agile delivery, with practical experience in frameworks such as SAFe, Scrum or Kanban.
• Ability to break down high-level intent into actionable product artefacts.
• Understanding of enterprise IT systems including infrastructure, service management and security.
• Excellent communication skills, able to translate between technical and operational domains.
• Confidence in operating in high-tempo, mission-oriented environments.

Highly Desirable

• Experience working in defence, national security, or other regulated sectors.
• Familiarity with hybrid cloud platforms and IT modernisation programmes.
• Understanding of user needs in high-availability, high-security operational settings.
• Experience with Jira, Confluence or other Agile tooling.
  
  

Working at Rowden

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!

We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.

Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.

Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!