Senior Product Manager

Government Recruitment; Manchester; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

A public sector recruitment agency in Manchester seeks a Product Manager to oversee the delivery of the MAPPS programme, supporting user needs and strategic policies. The role entails managing the product lifecycle, leading roadmap creation, and ensuring compliance with governmental standards. Ideal candidates have experience with user-centered design and agile methodologies. This opportunity plays a vital part in improving public safety services.

Qualifications

• Experience with product management in an agile environment.
• Understanding of user needs and user-centered design principles.
• Ability to manage product backlogs effectively.

Responsibilities

• Lead the creation of product roadmaps and lifecycle strategies.
• Manage the full product lifecycle from inception to retirement.
• Champion user-centered design throughout the delivery process.
• Maintain a balanced product backlog of immediate and long-term needs.
• Drive continuous improvement using product data and user feedback.
• Advocate for quality standards and accessibility compliance.

Job description

These roles are to provide quality product management within a complex agile Programme, the Multi-Agency Public Protection Service (MAPPS). MAPPS will be used by various organisations including police, probation services and others. It is required to support a multi-agency oversight of relevant offenders once they are released from custody for as long as they are considered to present a risk to the public. As such MAPPS has a high political profile as well as a very complex network of stakeholders. The Programme is focused on providing parity with a legacy system. Once achieved there will be continuous improvement to meet customer needs beyond parity.

You will be part of a team of Product Managers working within a wider multidisciplinary team with interaction designers, user researchers, developers and testers. Your aim will be to deliver world-class services that properly balance the needs of users of the system and strategic owners of the operations and policies. One of the roles will be focused on the strategic MAPPS Product and the long-term direction of its development, while others will be focused on elements of the overall Product and ensuring these elements are sufficiently understood for development teams to design and build them.

Responsibilities

• Lead the creation of roadmaps, release plans, and lifecycle strategies from inception to retirement, contributing to departmental planning.
• Manage the full product lifecycle, including discovery, alpha, beta, and live phases, ensuring successful service assessments.
• Work with Product Owners to represent user needs throughout delivery, championing user-centred design while ensuring these needs are well balanced with those of strategic owners of the system, operations and policy.
• Prioritise development work by maintaining a balanced product backlog that reflects both immediate needs and long-term business value.
• Ensure final sign-off on completed functionality by Product Owners before deployment to production environments.
• Use product data and user feedback to drive continuous improvement, promoting evidence-based design.
• Ensure product quality meets standards such as the Government Digital Service Standard, Technology Code of Practice, TDA standards, and accessibility legislation, while advocating these across the department and wider government.