Job Description

Purpose of the role

Drive the product vision and strategy across the organization ensuring alignment with business objectives and customer needs, inclusive of internal and external customers, clients, or partners. Lead Product Owners ensure delivery of key strategic initiatives to embrace a customer journey led approach and unlock high quality business capabilities that drive business and customer value. They own the development of strategic direction for a specific product or portfolio, including the implementation of up-to-date systems, methodologies and processes. Inspires, leads and supports the product development team in Servant leadership capacity  to deliver high-impact solutions with healthy collaboration. Responsible for defining the product roadmap and prioritising initiatives. Works closely with cross-functional stakeholders, fosters collaboration, champions a customer-centric approach, and leverages market insights and domain expertise to shape and adapt product strategy.

Accountabilities

• Define & Execute Product Strategy: Accountable for developing, defining & executing a comprehensive product strategy that aligns with the business and company’s overall vision, managing capabilities, balancing short-terms with long-terms strategic goals, ensuring that products meets customer and  market demands and drive growth. 

• Drive Product Innovation: Lead initiatives to innovate and evolve product offerings by staying ahead of market trends, customer needs, and emerging technologies, ensuring the product remains competitive and forward-thinking.   

• Oversee Product Development Lifecycle: Accountable for overseeing the entire product development lifecycle, from concept to launch, ensuring efficient processes, on-time delivery, and alignment with E2E customer expectations and experience. Collaborates across other product teams to align and minimize dependencies to meet desired timing. 

• Oversee Product Goals and Performance: Accountable for defining clear objectives and key outcomes to steer the product vision and ensure alignment with company’s business goals, financial targets, and strategic vision, driving long-term business success. Monitor product performance through data-driven analysis and insights,  regularly assessing progress against objectives and adjusting the roadmap and backlog as needed to optimise outcomes and maximise value for both business and customer, providing context to the wider cross functional team.

• Customer-Centric Focus: Drive a customer – first approach across the product vision, ensuring customer insights, feedback, behaviours, and pain points are at the core of the product strategy and decision-making process.  They champion the customer’s voice throughout the development lifecycle ensuring enhancement’s deliver high value, improve satisfaction, and align with evolving customer needs and expectations. 

• Stakeholder Communication and Management:  Lead  collaboration between cross-functional teams and act as the key liaison between the product organisation and senior leadership, investors, and other stakeholders, ensuring transparent communication about product vision, strategy, and performance. 

• Manage and Develop Product Teams: Accountable for mentoring, and developing high-performing product teams, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement. 

• Risk and Control:  Managing risk, including identification of potential risks, development of strategies to resolve or mitigate and escalate as necessary those risks, and alignment between the product management and control functions. 

• Domain Expertise: Demonstrates deep understanding of relevant domain, with the ability to translate complex concepts to customers and other stakeholders while effectively communicating business requirements to development teams. 

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..

• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..

• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others..

• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..

• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.

• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.

• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.

• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.

• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.

• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.

• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.

• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Join us as a Product Owner at Barclays. In this role you will create, and evolve your strategic product delivery roadmap, define the product vision – secure buy in across senior stakeholders and different functions – overseeing management of a product backlog, including prioritisation, own the end to end delivery of regular delivery cycles, driving forward process framework optimisation and continuous improvement while delivering innovative products.

To be successful in this role, you should have experience with:

• Product ownership experience – Support with defining the product strategy roadmap for our onboarding and client maintenance workflow system
• Overseeing delivery teams - deploying complex change, prioritise back logs
• Experience of managing and implementing products from inception to delivery within a large operations function
• End to end client maintenance over ops and function
• Experience of partnering closely with both operations and technology in Financial Institutions to deliver key design artefacts and support end to end change delivery aligned to business outcomes
• Experience of product design and execution

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Delivery in AI Solutions (innovation and driving this area) – Delivering automated end to end solutions
• Agile environment experience
• Influence across senior stakeholders from MD and below across functions and technology
• Self-Starter – proactive – motivated and drives forward with own standards
• Previous KYC experience
• Proven track record of working in the Financial Services Industry
• Project Governance expertise with experience in prioritising and managing multiple completing workstreams

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role is based in London.