Senior Product Manager

Senior Product Manager – Safety Transformation

Role: Senior Product Manager (Interim / Contract)

Duration: 9 months

Location: National

Day rate: Competitive

IR35 status: Inside IR35

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Product Manager to provide urgent product leadership for a Safety Transformation programme across a national prisons digital function.

This is not a single, narrowly defined product. The role will support the transformation of how safety is managed across prisons, which may include multiple services, products, policy changes, operational practice improvements and digital capabilities across the wider safety landscape.

The Safety Transformation vision is to improve safety through better identification, understanding and response to vulnerability, risk and harmful behaviour, enabled by improvements to operational practice, service design and digital capability. The work will focus on how safety-related risk is identified, understood, recorded, shared and acted upon across prison environments, including areas such as suicide and self-harm case management, violence reduction and incentive/support plans, segregation, vulnerability, harmful behaviour and wider safety management processes.

This role supports a core business strategy priority and a funded commitment to address safety management across the prison estate. It will help build the evidence base for future investment decisions and reduce the risk of underspend or poorly allocated spend across a three-year funding period.

Who You Will Work With

You will work closely with prison officers, Safer Custody teams, Governors, prisoner representatives and insight, safety policy leads, service owners, operational stakeholders, managed service teams and digital leadership. You will ensure the work is grounded in operational reality and supports the needs of frontline staff, operational leaders and prisoners.

Key Responsibilities

Shape the product vision, strategy and roadmap for Safety
Transformation across multiple strands of discovery, experimentation and
delivery.

Define and prioritise MVP options for improving safety in
prisons, recognising that the solution may include digital, service,
operational and policy interventions.

Lead prioritisation of the managed service team backlog,
ensuring effort is focused on the highest-value safety problems.

Align product direction with policy owners, service owners,
safety stakeholders, operational leaders and prison users.

Ensure work meets government digital service standards and
is evidence-led, human-centred, safe and operationally viable.

Support discovery, alpha and beta activity across multiple
strands of experimentation.

Improve understanding of data and information flows across
core prison systems and other relevant platforms.

Support the safe testing, prioritisation and evaluation of
new capabilities or service changes.

Prepare the work for transition to permanent product
ownership, including documented roadmaps, backlog, decisions, evidence, risks
and stakeholder relationships.

•  

Skills and Experience Required

• Strong experience setting product vision, strategy and
  roadmaps for complex or high-risk services.

  Proven ability to lead multidisciplinary teams and
  prioritise work using user insight, data and organisational outcomes.

  Demonstrable experience coaching and mentoring Product
  Managers, improving capability and strengthening product practice.

  Strong stakeholder management skills, including influencing
  senior leaders and building agreement across organisational boundaries.

  Experience leading products through discovery, alpha, beta
  and live service using Agile and Lean approaches.

  Ability to manage risks, dependencies and investment to
  deliver measurable value for money.

   

Senior Product Manager Capabilities

At this level you will be expected to:

• Lead teams in Agile and Lean practices and introduce
  innovative ways of working to achieve the right outcomes.

  Demonstrate an advanced understanding of design, technology
  and data principles.

  Work with, and constructively challenge, senior
  stakeholders.

  Adapt your approach to the constraints in play, prioritising
  and mitigating them and turning them into an advantage.

  Realise benefits by linking work in progress back to the
  business case, and build business cases based on user needs.

  Lead teams through the full product life cycle, choosing the
  right tools and techniques at each stage.

  Keep abreast of industry best practice and make operations
  more efficient.

  Act as an escalation point for major operational issues and
  champion operational management across the community.

  Anticipate problems and defend against them at the right
  time.

  Build problem-solving capability in others.

  Meet the needs of users across a variety of channels,
  applying strategic thinking to provide the best service for the end user.

   

To apply, please click below or for more information, please contact simon.pickerell@veredus.co.uk