Junior Product Manager

Embark on a thrilling journey as a Junior Agile Product Manager, partnering with a seasoned Product Manager to spearhead the development and refinement of innovative products.

Dive into the heart of collaboration with cross-functional teams, and embrace a role that blends leadership with hands-on experience in steering product strategy and ensuring alignment with business objectives.

So, what will you do?

You will be helping the Product Manager in the definition and delivery of high-quality products that meet merchant needs and drive business value.

You will work closely with stakeholders, and customers to aid in story creation and grooming, feature prioritisation, the creation and maintenance of product backlogs, and to help ensure the successful execution of the product roadmap. You may also be required to own small portions of the broader product development process end-to-end with your Product Manager acting as your key stakeholder.

It is expected to frequently fulfil responsibilities similar to those of a Business Analyst, collaborating with software engineers, testers, technical architects, and other Product Managers to ensure effective and efficient work in supported areas. Your role will involve aiding in maximising the value of the product and ensuring that it aligns with the organisation's overall strategy and objectives.

In addition to the above, you will:

• Support the Product Manager in delivering intuitive and desirable software increments efficiently, despite limited skills and resources, ensuring these solutions not only meet the market demand and profitability goals but also remain user-friendly and compelling for daily use.
• Be responsible for defining the problem that needs to be solved, so that design and engineers can collaborate around that solution.
• Own portions of the SDLC process that produces valuable and usable software end-to-end.
• Track industry trends and the competitive landscape as they pertain to your product area, to make most informed decisions as well as to grow understanding of the competitive landscape in the business.
• Contribute to everyone in the business having a solid knowledge of who our products are built for, how our products will deliver highest value to them, and key data points of how our users are effectively engaging with the product. Other stakeholders include the Product Manager that they report to, sales, marketing, finance, risk / legal / compliance, customer support, retail partners.
• Understand and help contribute to the building of extraordinary teams that are passionate about result and innovation.
• Help the Product Manager to create and maintain the product backlog, ensuring it is prioritised, refined, and accurately reflects the requirements and priorities of the product.
• Collaborate with development teams to refine user stories, acceptance criteria and other backlog items.
• Continuously help to groom and prioritise the backlog to ensure the most valuable features are being worked on.
• Act as one of the primary points of contact between stakeholders, development teams and other cross-functional teams for the work that the you are responsible for.
• When tasked to, provide clear and timely direction to the development team by maintaining a well-groomed and prioritised product backlog.
• Participate in sprint planning, backlog refinement and other Agile ceremonies.
• Aid in the making of informed decisions about scope, prioritisation, and trade-offs to ensure the successful delivery of high-quality products.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, Business Administration) or equivalent practical experience.

Deal Breakers:

2 years’ experience working on technology or software products as either a product owner, business analyst or junior product manager with the following:

• Thorough exposure to the Software Development Life Cycle.
• Knowledge of software development processes and technologies and clear comprehension of how to effectively communicate requirements of end users translated within a software development context.
• Familiarity with Business Process Mapping and an understanding of Agile Scrum development principles and methodologies (e.g., Scrum, Kanban) and experience in applying them to deliver successful products.
• Demonstrated experience working closely with software engineers, testers and architects to deliver software increments as well as prior involvement in the creation and refinement of use cases, functional specifications, and technical requirements.
• Demonstrated experience working closely with product or service designers to deliver software increments as well as familiarity with user-centred design principles and UX/UI concepts.
• Experience with product management tools (e.g., Jira, Trello) and Agile project management software.

In addition to the above, the following will make you a frontrunner for the role:

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities.
• Able to deliver on results.
• Ability to influence colleagues and stakeholders.
• Ability to create clear and concise documentation such as Agile stories.
• Ability to turn requirements into functional backlog items and workable user stories for Development teams.
• Evaluate options and make recommendations based on data and analysis.
• Firm understanding of the business domain in which they are working. This knowledge includes the industry trends, key business processes, regulations, and customer needs.
• Must have basic understanding of technology and be able to communicate effectively with developers, testers, and other technical team members.
• Industry experience in Financial Services, Information Technology, Business management and Income statements would be advantageous.
• Knowledge and comprehension of the organisation's goals, objectives, strategies, products, services, customers, and competitors.
• Solid understanding of the defined roadmap and of the business and its processes.
• Comprehension of Product lifecycles (end to end ) and conceptualise a developed product/feature.
• Understand the product to facilitate training.