Product Manager - Digital Partner AI Powered Service

John Lewis; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 96,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

London office

Employee ownership

Job summary

John Lewis is seeking a Product Manager for the Digital Partner to take it to market, deciding what to build and in what order with Engineers, Designers and Data Scientists. You will be the voice of the customer in every decision, ensuring the experience is helpful, trustworthy, and easy.

This is a hybrid role based at the London Head Office in Pimlico, with flexible working arrangements to balance business needs.

Qualifications

• Launching digital products to market and seeing adoption/iteration.
• Senior leaders with credibility and advocacy-building abilities.
• Care for customer experience and use data/research to improve it.
• Experience leading a Product team with Agile (Scrum/Kanban).
• Able to solve complex problems and bring new perspectives.
• Able to prioritise changing demands effectively.
• Capable of balancing multiple priorities, stakeholders and timelines.
• Make data-driven decisions in product development.
• Experience with conversational AI, LLMed products, or AI assistants in customer-facing settings.
• Experience with agent-to-agent interactions or multi-agent orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Take Digital Partner to market and own it from there, deciding what to build and in what order with Engineers, Designers and Data Scientists.
• Be the voice of the customer in every decision, ensuring the experience feels helpful, trustworthy and easy.
• Collaborate with senior leaders to secure investment and align on roadmap priorities.
• Lead and mentor a Product team using Agile methodologies to deliver iterations.
• Translate customer needs into clear, actionable product requirements and user stories.

Skills

Product management

Stakeholder influence

Customer experience

Agile methods

Data-driven decisions

Conversational AI

LLM products

AI assistants

Cross-functional

Prioritisation

Agentic systems

Job description

About the role

Here at John Lewis, we have always been known for market‑leading service, and for Partners on the shop floor who know their stuff and genuinely want to help and support customers.

We are looking for a Product Manager - The Digital Partner- who brings that same expertise to customers online and on our app.

It’s an AI‑powered assistant that helps customers find the right product, answers their questions with the confidence of a Partner who knows the range, and supports them after they've bought, from tracking an order to sorting a return.

It’s new for the Partnership, it’s high profile, and we’re now moving from a working proof of concept to a product our customers will use every day.

• Salary Band - £64,500 to £96,000
• Expected salary up to - We are looking for candidates up to £90,000 depending on the experience you would bring to the role
• Contract type - This position is a permanent contract
• Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you’ll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs, whilst balancing the needs of the business. We typically aim for around three days a week in the office for collaboration and attendance of key meetings.
• Location - This role is based at our London Head Office campus in Pimlico.
• Please note you need to be based in the UK for this role to support hybrid collaborative working

As Product Manager, you’ll take Digital Partner to market and own it from there. You’ll decide what we build and in what order, working with Engineers, Designers and Data Scientists, alongside our Trading and Agentic Commerce teams.

You’ll be the voice of the customer in every decision, making sure the experience feels unmistakably John Lewis: helpful, trustworthy and easy. Because this is one of the Partnership’s most visible programmes, you’ll spend real time with senior leaders, sharing progress, making the case for investment and bringing them with you on the hard calls.

We’re looking for someone who has launched digital products and seen them through adoption and iteration. You’ll be confident and credible with senior stakeholders, and able to make complex technology simple for people who aren’t technical. You’ll care deeply about customer experience and use data and research to keep improving it. Experience with conversational AI, LLM‑based products or agentic systems is a strong advantage. If you’ve worked on agent-to-agent interactions or multi‑agent orchestration, we’d especially like to hear from you.

This is new ground for the Partnership, and you’d help shape how we do it.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Launching digital products: You’ve taken new customer‑facing digital products to market and seen it through adoption and iteration.
• Senior stakeholder influence: You’re confident and credible with senior leaders, with the ability to build advocacy with the Executive team.
• Customer experience: You care about the detail of the customer experience and use research and data to keep improving it.
• Experience leading others within a Product team using an Agile development methodology (such as Scrum or Kanban).
• Able to solve complex problems and take a new perspective on existing solutions.
• Proven ability to respond to and prioritise changing demands effectively.
• Ability to balance multiple priorities, stakeholders and timelines.
• Making data oriented decisions.
• Conversational AI: Experience with conversational AI, LLM‑based products or AI assistants in a customer‑facing setting.
• Agentic systems: Experience of agent-to-agent interactions or multi‑agent orchestration.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• AI quality and trust: An understanding of how to test and manage the quality of AI responses, including accuracy, guardrails and evaluation.
• Retail and e‑commerce: Experience in retail or e‑commerce, ideally in product discovery (search, recommendations, product content) or post‑purchase customer service (order tracking, returns).
• Experience of defining and delivering Minimum Viable Products, running A/B tests.

The partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food‑lovers in Waitrose.

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect.

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective.

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.

Important points to note:

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre‑employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third‑party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.

If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work‑life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.