About the job

Job summary

The People DDaT team have a mandate that covers strengthening the People (HR) function to:

1. Provide strategic leadership on all things digital, data & technology related across the People function
2. Cohere demand for People products & services from across the function
3. Provide expert advice, guidance and assurance to ensure that products & services align with strategic intent and appropriate standards

Product Management roles are vital to ensuring that the above mandate is achievable, with a strong focus on ensuring products meet the needs of those who use them, can be developed iteratively and continuously improved over time and deliver measurable value to the wider organisation.

The Senior Product Manager works in a small enabling DDaT team at the centre of the People function, alongside other product management roles, Enterprise and Technical Architects and Service Design and User Experience leads, who engage, influence and assure the quality of People products across Civilian, Military and Veterans Personnel services.

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.

Job description

The Senior Product Manager is responsible for: 

• Providing product strategy & leadership across a range of People products & services
• Working with a diverse range of stakeholders from across Defence teams, civilian, armed forces and Veteran’s communities, to cohere the demand signal for People products & services
• Providing product expertise, advice and guidance to support use and development of appropriate products across the People function
• Drive increased digital ways of working, in line with Government Service Standards
• Validating that development and enhancements to products & services meet the needs of users and align with the People function’s strategic objectives. Including:
  • Ensuring that delivery priorities reflect user needs,
  • Harnessing user insight and user experience data to support prioritisation decisions
  • Inform enhancements to products that improve usability and accessibility
  • Setting standards and assuring People products & service against these

Person specification

Main duties 

As a Senior Product Manager, your main duties will be: 

To build strong, lasting, collaborative relationships with key stakeholders and delivery partners in order to: 

• Ensure that People product & service development aligns and remains aligned with user needs and People function strategic objectives, guiding and advising to balance any conflicting needs between end-users, policy intentions and business objectives 
• Support the coherence of demand for and prioritisation of People products & services on behalf of wider People function stakeholders 
• Identify and help manage inter-product & service dependencies, providing support to manage/mitigate risks and overcome blockers and problems 
• Identify and assess opportunities, suitability & scalability of digital and technology products to meet the needs of the People function 
• Provide product expertise in support of alignment with standards and support assurance activity required to meet such standards 
• Seek user insight and capture data on performance of services to optimise & continually improve People service delivery 
• Be a strong advocate for digital service delivery, identifying opportunities to embed agile ways of working and user-centred design that meet Government Service Standards, into how Defence works delivers 
• Advance Product Management adoption across Defence by collaborating with the wider product community both in Defence and across government and through sharing of best practice and working with others

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £57,670, Ministry of Defence contributes £15,570 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

An initial assessment of applications based on the 

When choosing your Behaviour examples, please make sure you use real life scenarios that relate to your own experiences. Whilst technology may help to enhance your submission, presenting the ideas of others or those generated by technology, could result in your application being rejected.

At Sift, you will be assessed against the following:

CV and Personal statement (1250 words) submitted will be conducted in order to select candidates deemed suitable for interview. This will primarily focus on experience and technical skills as out out in the Government Digital profession framework: https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/role/product-manager#senior-product-manager

Technical Skills:

• Life cycle perspective
• Product ownership
• User Focus

At Interview, you will be assessed against the following:

Success Profiles Behaviours :

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Making Effective Decisions
• Managing a Quality Service

Technical Skills:

• Agile Working
• Government Digital and Data perspective
• User focus
• Working within constraints

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equality of opportunity. There is a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. If you need to advise us that you need additional help or reasonable adjustments for the recruitment process, please contact: DBSCivPers-Resourcingteam3@mod.gov.uk .

As a result of the changes to the UK immigration rules which came into effect on 1 January 2021, the Ministry of Defence will only offer sponsorship for a skilled worker visa under the points based system, where a role has been deemed to be business critical.

The role currently being advertised has not been assessed as business critical and is therefore NOT open to applications from those who will require sponsorship under the points based system. Should you apply for this role and be found to require sponsorship, your application will be rejected and any provisional offer of employment withdrawn.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.