Product Owner (User experience and data presentation)

Job content

Our people love the exciting and meaningful work they do, the cutting-edge resources and technology they have access to, the benefits we offer and the great community we’ve built. Want to join them?

Our people love the exciting and meaningful work they do, the cutting-edge resources and technology they have access to, the benefits we offer and the great community we’ve built. Want to join them?

This is a fantastic opportunity for a driven and hands-on individual to become a key member of one of the UK’s leading SaaS companies, at a time of growth and as we roll out new and exciting services. We are particularly interested in applicants with strong, demonstrable skills and passion for great user experiences, as well as experience data handling and analytics.

The Product Owner is responsible for the product backlog across multiple functional areas. This responsibility includes gathering and prioritizing product and customer requirements, working closely with development, sales, pre-sales, marketing and professional services to ensure customer satisfaction goals are met and exceeded, and to help us maintain our leading market position.

You will be working with a well-qualified and expert team, in the leading Workday partner for automated testing and other associated products and services globally, with a customer base of >250, many of which are household names. And we’re growing both in terms of revenues and customers, but also in terms of our use of innovative technologies and our range of service offerings under the Kainos Smart product suite. This is an opportunity to join at a crucial time to put your stamp on our products and services and how we continue to lead in our market. The position offers opportunities for the right individual to grow into other more senior areas within the Kainos Smart business or in the wider Kainos business.

To continue to drive the success of Kainos Smart products and services we need to ensure that we prioritise, define, and drive the delivery of our roadmap, drawing on resources and innovation across the business and from partner. It will provide the opportunity to engage with clients and with a wide range stakeholders across Kainos.

The Successful Candidate Will

• Be responsible for evolving the Product Roadmap for at least one main functional area
• Have experience as a product owner in an Agile software development environment
• Capture requirements from:
• Existing customers;
• Field (Product Enhancement Requests and Contractual commitments);
• Market (through collaboration with Sales, Customer Success, Services, and Product Marketing to address market problems);
• Professional Services teams;
• Internal sources
• Define the product backlog, create actionable user stories for development teams
• Manage and prioritise the backlog to ensure goals are met, optimising the value of development team effort
• Drive a clear understanding of and manage to release acceptance criteria for each product feature, including the criteria for the minimal viable product
• Identify and measure the success criteria for each delivered feature
• Measure, track and improve non-functional aspects of the product
• Sustain and cultivate the right relationships with technology partners;
• As required, step in to support sales efforts with product demos and customer discussions on more technical aspects of the product
• Be flexible to travel if required to customer and partner locations worldwide
  

Experience Required

A minimum of 2-3 years’ experience working as a Product Owner in a SaaS environment on managing backlog, working with development teams and building Product Roadmaps. Demonstrable experience and capability to successfully carry out the key elements of the Product Owner role above.

Excellent communication skills are vital. You’ll need to be a persuasive and effective communicator with strong negotiating skills. It’s not only about talking, you’ll need to be able to listen, understand, and build on other’s viewpoints. You will have an enthusiasm for new technologies and innovation and be prepared to take advantage of the flexibility provided to challenge and be proactive in bringing new ideas to how we work and to the product roadmap.

Essential Skills

• You will need an eye for detail, particularly to interpret supplied information and understand sources and challenge where necessary
• A passion for User Experience and experience in working on customer facing products
• The ability to facilitate team meetings and group conversations
• Comfort and ability to engage with customers to understand requirements, and support functional or technical product discussions
• Relevant commercial experience and awareness to help set priorities of product investments and drive commercial product success
• A good understanding of technology, digital services and trends
• The ability to communicate effectively with the team and external stakeholders.
  

Desirable Skills

• Experience with Automated Testing Frameworks
• Software Testing Experience
• Experience in applications handling large volumes of data and keen eye for data presentation and reporting
• Solid understanding of front-end frameworks such as AngularJS
• Experience in UI and UX design and implementation
• Experience of Using AI and ML to help create quality Solutions for our customers
  

About Kainos Smart: Our cloud-based automated testing tool, Kainos Smart, is one of a kind. It is the only product that has been built exclusively for testing Workday. It is designed to make automated Workday testing easy for all users regardless of technical or testing background. With Smart you can quickly create repeatable tests covering Workday business processes, security configuration and integrations. Using Smart, our clients are saving thousands of man hours on testing and gaining much greater assurance on the correctness and compliance of their Workday deployment.

Who You Are

Our vision is to enable outstanding people to create digital solutions that have a positive impact on people’s lives. Our values aren’t abstract; they are the behaviours we expect from each other every day and underpin everything that we do. We expect everyone to display our values by being determined in how obstacles are overcome; honest when dealing with others; respectful of how you treat others; creative to find solutions to complex problems and cooperative by sharing information, knowledge and experience. These values, applied collectively, help to produce an outstanding Kainos person, team and culture.

We’re an inclusive bunch at Kainos and we believe in equal opportunity. We welcome applications from all walks of life, including those with criminal records. Everyone who is offered a position here undergoes a basic background check , however no one is treated differently due to their background where it isn’t relevant to the role. It’s important to note - failure to reveal information which is relevant to the position sought, could result in us having to withdraw the conditional offer of employment.

In short: Having a criminal record will not exclude you from a career with Kainos. This depends entirely on the nature and requirements of the position, together with the circumstances and background of offences. Kainos has a policy on the recruitment of ex-offenders (available on request).

Who You Are

Our vision is to enable outstanding people to create digital solutions that have a positive impact on people’s lives. Our values aren’t abstract; they are the behaviours we expect from each other every day and underpin everything that we do. We expect everyone to display our values by being determined in how obstacles are overcome; honestwhen dealing with others; respectfulof how you treat others; creative to find solutions to complex problems and cooperative by sharing information, knowledge and experience. These values, applied collectively, help to produce an outstanding Kainos person, team and culture.