Workday Product Owner

TN United Kingdom; London; On-site; GBP 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a skilled Product Owner to drive business results and enhance customer value through effective product management. This role involves translating customer needs into actionable user stories, managing stakeholder expectations, and ensuring the squad delivers on strategic goals. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in HR or finance transformations, particularly with Workday or SAP, and possess exceptional communication and critical thinking skills. Join a dynamic team that values innovation and customer focus, and help shape the future of product delivery in a collaborative environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years as Product Owner leading HR/Finance transformations.
• Strong understanding of Workday configuration and processes.

Responsibilities

• Deliver business results by prioritizing impactful work for end users.
• Translate customer needs into user stories and manage stakeholder expectations.

Skills

Critical thinking

Stakeholder management

Customer focus

Data-driven decision making

Agile methodologies

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree

7+ years experience as Product Owner

Tools

Workday

SAP

Job description

Deliver business results and customer value

• Ensure that the Workday product is built in an incremental way, releasing new working features at the end of each squad and creating value for the customer.
• Track product performance to inform future work.
• Prioritize work that is most impactful for end users.
• Deliver on specific and measurable Key Results to be defined for your Squad.
• Manage relevant product budget process and support the Product Portfolio Lead in engaging with the funding process.

Serve as the voice of customer or end-user

• Translate the voice and needs of customer into user stories, engaging users as needed.
• Effectively manage stakeholders and users expectations while building credibility through a strong business sense and balancing of priorities.
• Engage in continuous discovery (e.g., via surveys & interviews) to understand customer needs.
• Leverage empirical and qualitative data to assess feature performance and inform prioritization.
• Determine tradeoffs involving customer value, cost, and speed to execution.
• Represent customer needs to ensure they are understood and integrated into the Squad's work.

Oversee what is delivered by the Squad and when

• Apply design-thinking to technical issues to understand how users engage with the system and consider multiple alternatives to find the best solution.
• Own end-to-end delivery of enhancements by understanding second and third order implications of decisions and cross-functional impact.
• Prioritize work through a well-organized backlog of user stories and clearly communicate what needs to be done and by when.
• Define and clearly communicate acceptance criteria for output based on business & customer needs.

Support and enable the Squad to get its work done

• Challenge guidance/answers when necessary to arrive at the best possible understanding of issues and proposed solutions.
• Regularly engage with the Squad to offer feedback on work-in-progress and clarify requirements.
• Engage with Chapter Leads regarding resourcing and functional expertise required in Squad.
• Provide feedback as part of performance management of Squad members and other members of the Product Portfolio.

Set an overall vision to direct and inform the Squad's work

• Work closely with the Product Team Lead to understand and drive alignment on the Product Portfolio's business strategy, goals, and objectives.
• Translate Product Portfolio objectives into a clear vision (e.g., via Key Results, sprint goals) for your Squad to inform the creation and prioritization of the Squad's backlog of work.
• Share information about the Squad's output and priorities with other Product Owners to ensure alignment across the organization.

Capabilities

• Critical thinking and balancing information from multiple sources (technical and functional) to guide the squad to the correct outcome.
• Applying a consultative approach to interactions with the squad and stakeholders to build strong relationships and trust.
• Being customer-focused and dedicated to understanding and learning about customer needs and requirements.
• Operating with a transparency mindset, communicating clearly and openly.
• Working with ambiguous requirements and multi-disciplinary teams.
• Influencing stakeholders up to the senior levels of the organization.
• Bringing a data-driven approach to decision making, both in day-to-day management and in making strategic trade-offs.
• Looking for opportunities to innovate and get things done better and faster.
• Total 7+ years relevant experience as Product Owner, leading design/support of HR / Finance transformations as part of a Workday or SAP team.
• Strong functional understanding of Talent, Performance, and/or contingent workforce processes, especially related to consulting or professional services organizations.
• Good understanding of technology enabled business transformation, Digital transformation, Organizational transformation, delivering enterprise-level IT and Digital projects.
• Experience collaborating with senior HR leadership and influencing decision making / project planning at a program level.
• Deep understanding of talent & performance Workday configuration is a plus.
• Experience working as part of agile teams and comfort with agile ways of working.
• Divergent thinker who can turn ideas into tangible products.
• Exceptional communications and stakeholder management skills.