Role: Lead Product Manager
Location: Nationwide 
Contract Type: Permanent/Full Time
Closing date: 2 weeks from live date

Our offer to you
We pride ourselves in being a great place to work, providing a supportive culture with opportunities to grow and develop your career, achieve a healthy work life balance and to be recognised for the great work you do. You will receive:

• Competitive salary and pension scheme
• 33 days holiday (inclusive of bank holidays) - increasing to 38 days over 5 years
• Hybrid, Flexible working
• Cycle to work scheme Electric Vehicle Scheme
• Health and Wellbeing portal – access to financial, health and wellbeing support and an Employee Assistance Programme
• Discounts – you will have access to Blue Light and NHS Discounts as well as discounts on mobile phones, gym membership, cinema tickets, restaurants, holidays and shopping

About Us
This is a fantastic opportunity to join a team of over 1,416 employees and over 31,000 volunteers, united by our goal of saving lives through essential first aid services, training and campaigning.  As a charity with rich heritage and a long history of serving humanity, we are proud of our past and excited about creating a healthier, safer, more resilient future. 

St John Ambulance works at the heart of communities, supporting and enabling them to access and receive physical and mental health first aid. We do this through developing and providing effective community response and outreach services (e.g. Ambulance response & Nighttime Economy) and using our longstanding expertise to empower people with vital clinical skills and the confidence to use them (e.g. our Volunteers and Community Advocates, NHS Cadets and Young Responders programmes). There is also a buoyant social enterprise network which delivers first aid training and supplies medical consumables to businesses and consumers.

This is an exciting time of transformation with an opportunity to lead and mature the charity’s data maturity by leading a new data strategy. 

Job Summary
The Lead Product Manager is responsible for managing SJA’s product management team to embed excellence in product strategy, vision and execution. The Lead Product Manager’s job involves ensuring that all St John Ambulance products support the company’s overall strategy and goals.

The Lead Product Manager will be required to support with Product Management of Products and Systems as and when required. They will require a good breadth of technical knowledge and experience in different platform types and delivering to meet diverse, and at times competing, business needs. Demonstratable and proven experience in working on commercial products is a must, and working with CRM systems would be beneficial.

You will need to establish and manage effective relationships with key business stakeholders, in particular Business Owners, Product Managers, Business Analysts, Engineers and IT Leads. Working with stakeholders to understand their short-, medium- and long-term strategic goals, you will support the creation of robust and manageable product roadmaps and backlogs and lead the product managers to successfully deliver against these strategic plans. 

The successful candidate will have the ability to dive into the detail to support day to day activity across the product families, whilst retaining a helicopter view to maintain strategic direction, ensure alignment across products and add value through good product management and governance. Experienced in product management and line management you will bring people together and effectively lead others  into a growth mindset that enables them to solve problems and build relationships to enable the business to reach their strategic and operational objectives.

About You
You will be educated to GCSE level or equivalent (Grade C) inc Maths & English (minimum of 5), be Product Management certified/Agile Project Management / any other recognised Product Management qualification, have experience in line management and team leadership, especially cultivating growth and development of your team, have demonstrable experience in communicating complex ideas and the interplay of multiple strategic objectives and delivery roadmaps, demonstrable and proven experience of commercial product management lifecycle, have experience as a delivery product lead/SME in business change projects with proven experience in transitioning projects to product business as usual within IT and Business, have experience of working in structured product team following defined governance standards relating to product roadmaps, resource management, issue management, change management etc & have the ability to translate complex technical solutions to a non-technical audience and gain the right level of buy-in and support.

About the Role

Essential responsibilities – Lead Product Manager 

• Member of the DDaT leadership team, fostering cross-functional co-operation and setting product strategy and resource allocation
• Defining and communicating the St John Ambulance’s product strategy within DDaT and with stakeholders outside the DDaT network
• Mentor and develop product managers, providing feedback and guidance to your line reports and when needed provide a buffer to keep your team focused on their product priorities
• Set team goals, embed product ways of working and monitor individual and team performance
• Report on product performance, product strategy and roadmaps to other networks and teams to boost understanding of what product management does and what it is delivering for them 

 All Product Managers 

• Define the product strategy and roadmap in line with the organisation’s strategy and goals, and the DDaT transformation programme
• Create and manage timelines for delivering the product roadmap, planning new features and changes to the product that account for a range of factors such as risks and opportunities
• Be recognised as the expert in the business on the product, the industry and relevant technology
• Act as a leader for your product within the business and build relationships with business stakeholders
• Run cross functional squads to deliver product roadmaps without formal line management authority over squad members
• Ensuring that requirements, solution design and tests are documented and maintained for traceability across product releases
• Work with external third parties on transformation programmes and/or the design and support of product features
• Run and participate in product ceremonies (stand ups, sprint planning, reviews and retros)
• Gather and evaluate ideas and opinions from users and product stakeholders to prioritise the most valuable features for delivery
• Inspire and enthuse colleagues and users of the product
• Appropriate product governance and communication structures are implemented and maintained
• Monitor, report and improve product performance  

Essential responsibilities – all Employees 

• Engage, involve and empower St John People in problem-solving and improving the organisation
• Actively promote diversity and a variety of perspectives across the organisation
• Perform any other duties commensurate with these responsibilities, the band of the post and skills and qualifications of the post-holder
• Be able to work on your own initiative and be highly motivated to achieve both personally and within a team 

Please see the job description for more detail (this can be viewed on our website or once you click apply)

Find out more about us, including our new Ask Me campaign, at www.sja.org.uk 

If you are a current St John Ambulance employee, please apply here: Click here

For all other candidates, or St John Ambulance volunteers wishing to apply: please apply below

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive high volume of applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

St John Ambulance are committed to increasing the diversity of our team and making sure we best reflect the diversity of the communities we serve.   At St John, everyone is valued and supported to thrive, we have several networks including Multi Culture, Disability and Accessibility, Pride, Family and Carers and Women’s groups.  We do not tolerate any form of discrimination and engender a sense of belonging for all, by creating an environment of mutual respect, where we value unique differences and demonstrate authentic allyship. We believe passionately in equality, diversity and inclusion.   

'St John Ambulance is committed to safeguarding and we promote safe recruitment practice. Therefore, all successful applicants will undergo pre-employment checks, including DBS Clearance, as part of the onboarding process, if applicable to the nature of the role'.

Please note: St John does not accept speculative CVs and will only review CVs sent in application for an advertised vacancy.

 [JS1]Do you want to be explicit about the systems? i.e. people, financial, website etc.