UCAS is at the heart of connecting people to higher education.

UCAS is the world’s leading shared admissions service for higher education. We provide application services for UK universities and colleges as well as delivering a wide range of research, consultancy and advisory services to schools, colleges, careers services, professional bodies and employers.

We’re a successful and fast-growing organisation, which helps hundreds of thousands of people every year. We're committed to delivering a first-class service to all of our customers — they're at the heart of everything we do.

Customer Insight and Product

The Customer Insight and Product business unit is at the heart of ensuring that UCAS delivers lasting change in line with the corporate strategy. By leveraging customer and market insight and championing the voice of the customer, we create and grow products and services that meet the needs of our markets now and in the future. Working closely with the wider organisation, we also design and manage UCAS’ architecture to support our ambitious business goals.

The Product Owner (PO) is a member of the agile delivery team. They are assigned to one/two products and are responsible for defining stories and prioritising the team backlog to streamline the execution of priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the features or components for the product.

The Product Owner has a significant role in maximizing the value produced by the team and by ensuring that stories meet the user’s needs and comply with the ‘Definition of Done’.

Key accountabilities:

• Work with the Lead Product Manager to prepare for Program Increment (PI) planning, updating the team backlog and reviewing this against the program vision, roadmap and prepare content and presentations.

• During PI planning facilitate the defining of stories and provide the clarifications necessary to assist the agile delivery team with their estimates and sequencing, help them to determine team PI objectives for the upcoming PI.

• Working with the Solution Architect, be primarily responsible for building, editing and maintaining the team backlog. Prioritise backlog items based on their user value, time and other team dependencies determined in the PI planning meeting and refine these during the PI, coordinating any dependencies across other POs.
  
  

Please refer to the attached role profile for further details about the role. 

• Significant experience of working in agile (Lean-Agile Frameworks) including scaled agile framework (SAFe) to deliver high quality digital products on time.

• Demonstrates a clear understanding of the product vision and goals and can communicate these to development teams. Is able to make links and bridge gaps to ensure that the business has a complete solution when developing and continuously improving its products.

• Has sufficient technical awareness to understand proposed designs and technical approaches, as outlined by technology professionals, to make informed decisions and be relatable and credible to them.

• Has strong communication skills and is able to manage the expectations of a range of customers, stakeholders and influences their decision making.

• Is able to translate technical language/terminology and make this relatable to wider audiences.

• Demonstrates customer focus and creates clarity to enable others to make decisions.

• Has experience in the development of product/market strategies.

• Understands and draws upon business analysis and project management techniques to drive continuous improvement throughout UCAS’ services, using well informed market intelligence and research.

• Is proactive in managing risks and blockers to ensure product development delivers within scope and in a timely way.

Please refer to the attached role profile for further details about the required skills and qualification.

Salary - competitive 

• 30(!)days annual leave, pro rata (plus 3 concessionary days over Christmas and your bank holidays!)

• Flexibility – UCAS positively supports Hybrid working for its employees, meaning you can work between home and the office in a way that suits you and the business and also has a comprehensive Flexible Working Policy

• A generous pension scheme

• Hundreds of high street discounts and offers with Perkbox

• Internal training and development

• Subsidised gym and café

• Be rewarded for going above and beyond with our ex-gratia bonus scheme and Celebrating U, our quarterly employee recognition scheme