Product Owner – Connected Mobility

About The Role

Motability Operations is the UK’s largest leasing company, supporting over 800,000 customers with worry-free mobility solutions. As we expand our capabilities in connected mobility, we are seeking an experienced Product Owner to help deliver our connected mobility strategy.

This key role involves helping to deliver a range of connected products and services that meet and surpass customer expectations, deliver process efficiencies and generate clear ROI. The successful candidate will be responsible for managing the product backlog, defining user stories, and ensuring that products are aligned with both customer requirements and business objectives.

Acting as a liaison between stakeholders and the development team, you will translate the product vision into a prioritised & actionable backlog that maximises business value while ensuring to addresses customer needs, whilst ensuring that the delivery team can deliver at pace.

Key Responsibilities

Backlog Management

• Oversee and manage the product backlog using prioritisation frameworks such as MoSCoW, RICE, Value/Effort, Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) etc.
• Ensure the backlog reflects customer needs, business value, and relevant strategic goals.
• Continuously groom the backlog & refine backlog items to adapt to evolving requirements.
• Manage the product team’s ticket mix and make suitable prioritisation decisions based on capacity, velocity, value, effort and risk etc.

User Story Development

• Develop clear and concise user stories with well-defined acceptance criteria that guide the development team in delivering features aligned with customer expectations.

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Work closely with the Product Manager to help turn a strategic roadmap into a groomed, prioritised and actionable backlog
• Serve as a key point of contact for stakeholders, gathering input and feedback to ensure alignment with product goals.
• Effectively communicate a clear product vision and roadmap to all relevant parties.

Customer Engagement

• Lead on customer engagement to gather insights and feedback that inform product development and enhancements.
• Development Team Leadership, Representation & Point of Escalation:
• Provide ongoing leadership to the development team by clarifying requirements and answering questions throughout the development process, ensuring customer needs are understood and addressed.
• Support the team to triage any production issues to ensure business impact is understood and fix is prioritised accordingly.

Lead Key Agile Ceremonies (Sprint Planning/Review Etc)

• Drive Sprint Planning/Review ceremonies to set goals and priorities for each iteration.
• Review completed work during sprint reviews to ensure it meets acceptance criteria.
• Ensure the team is prepared to Present and Demo their work at Sprint Reviews/Tribe Sync’s/Showcase days etc, supporting to articulate the problem statement faced, solution proposed, and value added as well as what’s coming up in subsequent sprints

Performance Tracking & Optimisation

• Take ownership of managing product performance against key performance indicators (KPIs) such as capacity, velocity, cycle time, lead time etc
• Gather insights to help drive iterative continuous improvement within the development team that enable the team to ship better products, quicker.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including marketing, design, engineering, and quality assurance, acting as the main point of contact to ensure successful product delivery.

Market Research

• Stay informed about industry trends and competitor products to identify opportunities for innovation and improvement within our offerings.

Facilitate Communication

• Ensure effective communication within the Scrum team to foster collaboration and resolve any impediments to progress.

About You

You have a strong background in product ownership or management within an Agile environment. Your excellent communication skills enable you to influence without direct authority, as you advocating for customer needs within cross-functional development teams.

You have a proven track record in software development through the full agile lifecycle including delivery and run.

You possess a deep understanding of Agile methodologies and have experience managing product backlogs and developing user stories. Your analytical mindset allows you to assess & make data-driven decisions how to deliver features that maximise customer and business value against KPIs.

You are skilled at identifying and defining commercial value and understanding new processes. You enjoy problem-solving and have a can-do attitude.

You are passionate about delivering high-quality products that enhance customer experiences, and you thrive in collaborative environments where you can inspire teams to achieve their best work.

Minimum criteria

You’ll need all of these.

• Experience as a Product Owner or in a similar role.
• Proven experience in managing/prioritising product backlogs and developing user stories
• Strong understanding of Agile methodologies (Scrum preferred), including participation in ceremonies incl sprint planning and reviews
• Experience of working with data to generate insights and analysis
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams
• Familiarity with common product management tooling incl JIRA, Confluence & Miro
• While a technical background is not expected, you are expected to have knowledge/experience of the software development lifecycle
• An understanding of the importance data governance and ethics

Desirable

• Knowledge of connected cars, technologies and data
• Knowledge of telematics, API integrations, or cloud-based data solutions.

Who You’ll Be Working With

As a Product Owner Connected Mobility you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the future of mobility at Motability Operations. Working alongside industry experts, you’ll have the opportunity to help develop innovative solutions that enhance customer experiences and create real value. This is a unique opportunity to grow your career while making a meaningful impact on the lives of our customers.

About The Company

Motability Operations is a unique organisation, virtually one of a kind. We combine a strong sense of purpose with a real commercial edge to ensure we provide the best possible worry-free mobility solutions to over 815,000 customers and their families across the UK. Customers exchange their higher rate mobility allowance to lease a range of affordable vehicles (cars, wheelchair accessible vehicles, scooters, and powered wheelchairs) with insurance, maintenance and breakdown assistance included. We are the largest car fleet operator in the UK (purchasing around 10% of all the new cars sold in the UK) and work with a network of around 5,000 car dealers and all the major manufacturers. We pride ourselves on delivering outstanding customer service, achieving an independently verified customer satisfaction rating of 9.8 out of 10.

Our Values Are At The Heart Of Everything We Do. They Represent Ambition, And We Look For Our People To Live And Breathe Them Every Day

We find solutions

We drive change

We care

As a Motability Operations team member, the benefits you can expect are:

• Competitive reward package including an annual discretionary bonus
• 15% non-contributory pension (9% non-contributory pension during probation period)
• 28 days annual leave with option to purchase and sell days
• 1 day for volunteering
• Funded Private Medical Insurance cover
• Electric/Hybrid Car Salary Sacrifice Scheme and Cycle to Work Scheme
• Life assurance at 4 times your basic salary to give you a peace of mind that your loved ones will receive some financial help
• Funded health screening for over 50s
• Voluntary benefits: charitable giving, critical illness insurance, dental insurance, health and cancer screenings for you and your partner, discounted gym memberships and season ticket loans
• Employee Discount Scheme with an app to save on the go
• Free access to healthcare apps such as Peppy, Unmind, Aviva Digital GP and volunteering app on Hand for all employees
• Generous family leave policies

At Motability Operations, we believe in building a diverse workforce, where our people are empowered to attend work as their true selves, and we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. We want to sustain a culture that nurtures, where employees are free to flourish and where they’re rewarded equally, regardless of race, nationality or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, age, disability, or gender.

We pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer and as such, all our offices provide first rate disability access. With our hybrid working environment, we do our best to accommodate part-time and flexible working requests where possible, building on our culture of trust, empowerment, and flexibility.