Senior Product Owner

Hungerford, England, United Kingdom

12/12/2024

"At KCS we've introduced a flexible hybrid work policy, where employees spend three days in the office and two days working from home. This approach promotes a balanced work environment that combines office collaboration with the comfort and convenience of remote work."

The primary role of the Senior Product Owner will be to take ownership of the global product strategy for our eCommerce product portfolio. You will be expected to work closely with customers, business stakeholders and R&D leaders to ensure there are clear strategic and value driven business cases to support our delivery priorities.

The eCommerce Product portfolio includes 3 solutions (WebTrade, WebBuilder, WebPro) available to the market, which integrates to existing ERP Solutions to provide an online shopping experience. The team focuses on improving market competitiveness, enhancing feature richness and spend time developing custom solutions to meet specific customer requirements.

We are looking for a highly organised and detail-oriented Senior Product Owner to drive the development and delivery across multiple squads. Reporting to the Director of Product Management – Apps and eCommerce, the Senior Product Owner will be responsible for managing the backlog and priorities for two squads, each potentially focused on different areas of the product. This role requires the ability to balance product vision with the needs of each squad, ensuring alignment on strategic objectives, technical requirements, and operational efficiency.

As the Product Owner, you’ll play a crucial role in translating the roadmap into a clear and actionable backlog, prioritising features, technical debt, and security tasks across the squads. Working with the Product Manager, you’ll help define roadmap priorities and support each squad’s success by writing detailed user stories, facilitating backlog refinement, and leading Agile ceremonies. Your focus on cross-functional collaboration, agile expertise, and structured prioritisation will drive cohesive, high-quality development across all product areas.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop a deep understanding of KCS's current eCommerce offerings and their configuration capabilities
• Conduct thorough competitive analysis and stay abreast of market trends in the eCommerce space
• Influence and contribute to the product roadmap based on market insights and customer needs
• Evaluate competitor products and propose feature improvements to increase market share

• Collaborative Roadmap Definition and Multi-Squad Backlog Management:
• Partner with the Product Manager to define and prioritise the product roadmap, aligning on goals that span multiple squads and product areas.
• Manage the backlog across three squads, each potentially working on different components of the product, balancing features, technical debt, and security considerations in line with product strategy.
• Prioritise and sequence stories within each squad’s backlog to maximise value and ensure alignment with roadmap objectives, adapting priorities as product needs evolve.
• Support sales and marketing teams with product knowledge and competitive positioning
  
  

• User Story Creation and Refinement for Diverse Product Areas:
• Develop clear, concise user stories with well-defined acceptance criteria for each squad, capturing both functional requirements and technical considerations unique to each product area.
• Collaborate with squad leads to refine stories, gathering input to ensure feasibility and alignment with technical and security constraints.
  
  

• Effort Estimation and Story Points:
• Facilitate estimation sessions within each squad, breaking down complex stories as needed and assigning Story Points that reflect effort and complexity.
• Ensure each squad has a balanced sprint that includes feature work, maintenance, technical debt, and security tasks aligned with team capacity.
  
  

• Scrum Leadership and Agile Practices:
• Act as the Scrum Master for each squad, leading daily stand-ups, sprint planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives to keep teams aligned and productive.
• Monitor sprint progress across all squads, proactively addressing obstacles and ensuring each team stays on track to meet deadlines and quality standards.
• Foster a collaborative environment across squads, promoting transparency, team accountability, and continuous improvement.
  
  

• Stakeholder Communication and Cross-Squad Alignment:
• Maintain open communication with the Product Manager, providing regular updates on squad progress, backlog health, and any risks or dependencies affecting multiple product areas.
• Engage with stakeholders to gather feedback, validate priorities, and ensure that all squads remain aligned with broader business objectives and timelines.
• Use feedback and data to refine priorities across squads, adapting backlog content to reflect current insights and evolving needs.
  
  

• Technical Debt and Security Oversight:
• Work closely with squad leaders and the engineering team to ensure that technical debt and security considerations are prioritised appropriately within each squad’s backlog.
• Balance new feature development with critical maintenance tasks, addressing legacy code, refactoring needs, and security improvements to maintain product stability.
  
  

• Data-Driven Decision Making and Performance Monitoring:
• Use metrics and user feedback to evaluate squad performance and adjust priorities across squads, ensuring that the product continuously delivers high-impact solutions.
• Leverage agile metrics to monitor each squad’s performance, sprint velocity, and backlog health, supporting data-driven improvements.
  

Skills, Knowledge And Experience

• Product Development and User Story Expertise:
• Skilled in creating detailed, actionable user stories that address both functional and technical requirements across multiple product areas.
• Proficient in backlog management and prioritisation techniques, with the ability to balance feature development, technical debt, and security needs across squads.
  
  

• Agile and Scrum Proficiency:
• In-depth understanding of Agile and Scrum frameworks, with experience leading agile ceremonies and managing multiple backlogs in a consistent sprint cadence.
• Able to translate strategic objectives into tactical plans for multiple squads, maintaining agile best practices and team alignment.
  
  

• Technical Understanding of Security and Maintenance Needs:
• Familiarity with managing technical debt and security requirements, enabling effective prioritisation across squads with different technical focuses.
• Able to engage in technical discussions and translate development requirements into actionable backlog items.
  
  

• Stakeholder Management and Communication:
• Strong communicator with the ability to engage both technical and non-technical stakeholders, building consensus and maintaining transparency across product areas.
• Effective at managing expectations, providing clear updates on progress, and ensuring alignment on priorities across squads and stakeholders.
  
  

• Analytical and Problem-Solving Abilities:
• Ability to dissect complex eCommerce systems, understand their architecture, and analyze how they can be optimized or reconfigured to meet customer demands.
• Analytical mindset with a structured approach to solving complex challenges across multiple teams and product areas.
• Adaptive to changing needs and priorities, using metrics and stakeholder feedback to refine backlog priorities and processes.
  
  

• Good to have skills
• Experience with ERP systems, particularly in the automotive, rental, distribution or manufacturing sectors
• Knowledge of ERP systems and their integration with eCommerce platforms
• Expertise in evaluating market trends and conducting competitive product analysis. Experience with iductry leading ecommerce platforms.
• Knowledge of API integrations and web technologies
• Familiarity with user experience (UX) design principles
• Experience with data analysis and reporting tools
  

Qualifications

• Educational Background: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Product Management and Agile Experience: Minimum of 3 years’ experience as a Product Owner or in a similar role, with experience managing multiple agile teams or squads in a cross-functional environment.
• Technical Understanding: Comfortable working with technical teams across different product areas, able to prioritise based on both business impact and technical requirements.
• Scrum Certification (CSPO or similar): Preferred but not required; experience leading multiple agile teams effectively is essential.
  
  

Key Behaviours and Attributes

• Attention to detail: Steven Bartlet eloquently summarised this in the following sentence, “If you don’t care about tiny details you’ll produce bad work because good work is the culmination of hundreds of tiny details.”
• Strategic Mindset: Proactive and solution-focused, with an ability to see the larger business impact of process improvements. You’re a big-picture thinker who can translate high-level strategies into actionable steps.
• Collaboration and Teamwork: Naturally collaborative, you’ll engage openly with cross-functional teams, fostering a constructive and high-performing working environment. Your approach to feedback and knowledge-sharing will be essential in building trust and cohesion across departments.
• Commitment to Professional Growth: A strong dedication to continuous learning and improvement, keeping up with industry trends and advancing personal expertise to drive excellence in the O2C space.
  
  

Company Info

Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS) is growing and growing fast, new opportunities are available, and change is required to continue on our journey of success. It’s an extremely exciting time to be joining our business!

We’re ranked No.37 in the Sunday Times HSBC international Track 200, a league table that ranks the top 200 of Britain’s mid-market private companies in order of fastest growing overseas sales.

Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS) excels in developing fully integrated business management solutions that empower our clients to source, stock, sell, and service profitably on a global scale. Senior Product Owner eCommerce will join our Product Management team, bringing deep expertise in eCommerce vertical for distributive, automotive and rental markets and will be focused to enhance KCS’s product suite and deliver impactful solutions for our customers. This role will drive key improvements across sales operations, collaborating with internal and client teams to ensure that KCS’s software solutions meet and anticipate industry needs.

Equal Opportunities

KCS is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires us to adjust the recruiting process please do advise us when contacted.

If this role is of interest to you please apply online.

Health and Safety

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 puts a legal obligation on KCS as an employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of its employees at work.

Employees also have a duty to take reasonable care for their own health and safety and of others who could be affected by their actions. Understanding the safety policies and co-operating with the arrangements that are in place is therefore an essential part of your employment.

To all recruitment agencies: KCS does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our careers site or direct to KCS employee. KCS is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.