We have just published two vacancies in our Product team – for a Product Manager and a Senior Product Manager. These are the first vacancies since I started as Head of Profession for Product Management so I thought I’d share a little about the roles, our product community and ways of working.

Product Management is well established in the organisation – Tom has been here a while advocating for, and embedding, strong fundamentals amongst the team while also spreading the good word more widely – now I just have to avoid destroying his legacy. We have a talented group with a mix of Civil Servants and contractors at various levels of experience (from relative newcomers to battle-scarred veterans) and differing engagement styles. It makes for a good mix and a supportive community.

My role as Head of Profession for Product Management is primarily focused on building the capacity in the profession by supporting our people in becoming the best product people they can be, hiring fantastic people and making sure everybody has the best opportunities possible when it comes to learning, development and on-the-job experience. I’m here to help our product people succeed but also to make sure to protect their well-being and to make sure we deliver value…because delivery is how you build careers.

Our products range from public-facing campaign websites to internal data platforms to services to help understand duties and customs procedures to reporting barriers to trade. We have fewer ‘monopoly’ services than elsewhere in Government and a lot of our work is closer to marketing or campaigning. Ultimately the goal is to encourage more exports and to attract more investment – and given that is the goal of pretty much every other country in the world (some exceptions apply) it is not without challenges.

Like pretty much everywhere we run multi-disciplinary teams working on various ‘missions’ and like everywhere else we never quite seem to have enough of the right people at the right time to ever do everything we want – but we’re working on that.

On the practical side of things we have offices in Cardiff, Darlington and London (and elsewhere but those three are where the Digital folk mainly reside). I’ve not been to the Darlington office yet but am told it is lovely and can confirm the Cardiff and London offices are really nice and very recently kitted out. We remain firmly in hybrid mode – I do two days a week in the Cardiff office give or take, some do more, some less. I don’t know what the future holds but this seems likely to remain the model.

We are all-in on O365, Teams etc. This isn’t a Google/Slack house and it does take a bit of getting used to but it is all implemented really well with a lovely team working on iterating and improving things. 

I’ve been here about 10 weeks and I can, hand on heart, say I’ve been really enjoying it and the time has flown by. 

So JOIN US!