Product Owner

Hiscox; Colchester; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job description

Job Type

Permanent

Build a brilliant future with Hiscox

The Team

The Hiscox UK Change Team is the bridge between the business and the technology teams, ensuring that technology change is prioritised, defined, broken down and delivered in a way that enables the business to achieve its strategic goals, whilst also enabling the technology strategy. This means understanding the end-to-end context of the change and having a laser-focus on value so that we can ensure both that we’re doing the right things and doing the things right. As such, we are looking for exemplary collaborators; people who thrive on building relationships, who aren’t afraid to challenge how things are done, and are capable of driving consensus and guiding people through every stage of the change journey, from idea to reality.

The Role

The Product Owner is a key role that sits within the Hiscox UK Retail Change team and is focused on delivering value across a designated value stream by aligning products and solutions to customer and stakeholder needs. As the key interface between the business, technology, and customer experience, you will be responsible for translating strategic objectives into actionable product initiatives that deliver functional business outcomes. In this role you’ll work with the value stream sponsor to craft the value stream's strategic roadmap, based on business strategy changes and then manage and prioritise the backlog to best deliver functional changes in line with the strategy and roadmap.

You’ll be someone who enjoys making things happen and consider stakeholder management one of your strengths, with the ability to effectively engage with both business and technical stakeholders. You like to be an empowered decision maker, able to prioritise, and can quickly establish where time needs to be invested to drive business value, providing cost-effective solutions to the business in line with the overarching strategy.

The Product Owner is empowered to make decisions around priority, scope and requirements driving stakeholder engagement, ensuring they are clear on customer needs ensuring a continuous flow of value from the team.

What You’ll Be Doing

Product Vision & Strategy:

• Develop and maintain a clear product vision aligned with the strategic goals of the value stream.
• Translate customer and stakeholder needs into a compelling product roadmap that delivers measurable outcomes.

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Engage with business stakeholders, customers, and technical teams to understand requirements and priorities.
• Act as the primary point of contact for the product within the value stream, facilitating clear communication between all parties.
• Supporting formal performance reviews, celebrating hard work, individual and team success.

Backlog Management

• Create, refine, and prioritise the product backlog to ensure alignment with value stream objectives.
• Define clear, actionable user stories and acceptance criteria to guide the development team.
• Prioritising incidents and other maintenance/health activities against value stream capacity and priorities.

Value Delivery

• Work closely with development teams to ensure timely delivery of high-quality solutions.
• Monitor and measure product performance, making data-driven decisions to optimise value.

Customer-Centric Innovation

• Incorporate customer feedback into product improvements and innovation.
• Advocate for the end-user experience in every decision, ensuring our products meet customer needs and expectations.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate with other value streams and change initiatives to identify synergies and dependencies.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement and agile practices within the team and across Hiscox UK.

Our Must Haves

• Proven experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, or similar role, ideally within insurance, financial services, or a comparable industry.
• Strong understanding of value stream models and their application in a business context.
• Expertise in agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) and familiarity with scaled agile frameworks (e.g., SAFe).
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence at all levels.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, with a focus on delivering customer and business value.
• A willingness and ability to help coach and develop others.

Our Nice To Haves

• Financial services or insurance industry experience.
• Experience of working with digital channels/automation and/or Insurance policy administration software.

Diversity and Hybrid working

At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the job and we’re committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. We have also learned over the past few years that working life doesn’t always have to be in the office, and now it is safe to do so we have introduced hybrid working to encourage a healthy work-life balance. We anticipate the successful candidate for this role will be in the office up to 2-3 days per week. This hybrid working model is set by the team rather than the business to enable you to manage your own personal work-life balance. We see it as the best of both worlds; structure and sociability on one hand, and independence and flexibility on the other.

Work with amazing people and be part of a unique culture.