Product Owner (12-month FTC)

Do you want to be part of a force for good, helping to make life better for customers and society in the moments that matter? At Hodge, we put people at the heart of our business, and that means our customers, colleagues and communities. Hodge is a Welsh financial services provider focused on real estate finance and specialist residential mortgage markets.

The role of Product Owner will take the technology product vision, and support on its delivery, working with customer experience, operations, product, technology, risk and compliance, customer experience and any other elements of the change needed to realise the product vision are clearly understood and prioritised.

The role will lead the development and execution of the technology customer journey, creating best in-class experiences to delight our customers with a rich and frictionless experience, increasing Hodge's relevancy with new and existing customers. Through owning and managing development roadmaps, there will be control of the prioritisation of the associated backlogs. Conducting regular customer testing and utilising various sources of insights to improve activity, working closely with the wider team to review and incorporate into the build.

Essential Experience:

• Agile qualification.
• Degree-level or equivalent qualification.
• Previous experience of technology change.
• Deep knowledge of understanding customer journeys.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of BCOBS, FCA and PRA regulatory frameworks.

Key Responsibilities will include:

• Develop a deep understanding of our customer experience to review and challenge existing processes as well as developing innovative solutions that always put our customers first.
• Help to shape the customer experience across all touchpoints with emphasis and understanding on the key moments of truth.
• Guide the delivery team and wider business to better understand and deliver for our customers being empowered to agree final user stories.
• Steer sprint/release planning sessions by working with the agile team to plan releases that deliver maximum business value and respond to customer needs, reducing effort by continuously refining the relevant backlogs.
• Lead discovery work around MVP for any new feature, collaborating with user experience and agile delivery teams to prototype and validate the MVP with customers.
• Effectively present the vision, roadmap, KPIs and execution plans to motivate delivery teams and meet business needs.
• Work with the other customer experience owners to establish best practice and hold PO meetings at the end of sprints to enable this.
• Act as an advocate for innovative and evidence-based approaches to improve customer experience and profitability.
• Understand customer target segmentation/key user personas and develop a deep understanding of customers' needs, developing personas at the outset, working with the customer experience and research to ensure they are used through design and delivery.
• Through a process of user acceptance testing, test and learn methodology and by leveraging, understand the customer; ensure that the customer's experience is relevant and engaging.
• Work with the change and operational areas to define any business cases and benefits and track the effectiveness of these to demonstrate value, including customer KPIs.
• Build trusted and effective working relationships with product, marketing, customer services, customer experience, regulatory and change teams.
• Inspire colleagues with a passion for delivering for the customer, challenging business areas and the development teams to place the customer at the heart of everything we do.
• Drive rapid progress within an agile team to deliver maximum value adhering to the Hodge delivery framework.
• Continue to develop knowledge of group products and services and customer research/user experience testing approaches, including the use of Google analytics and SessionCam.

Please be aware that should we pursue your application, all our Financial Services employees will be expected to complete background checks to assess suitability for employment, these include; a criminal record, identity, media, sanctions, adverse finance, fraud prevention and reference checks to comply with our regulatory requirements.

Hodge is an advocate of being an equal opportunities employer, We believe in promoting equality and diversity which is central to our lives today. We welcome applications from all sections of the community and recognises the value a diverse workforce brings to an organisation.

ESG and sustainability are at the heart of everything we do and serves as a reminder of the responsibility we have to our stakeholders, customers, colleagues and the communities we operate in to use our position wisely. We're currently exploring different certifications available and have done an initial review of how we think we'd fare, as we see this as a real opportunity for Hodge given our social purpose.

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