Product Owner (12-Month Fixed Term Contract)

Salary: National – ranging from £43,300 – £57,000 and London from £46,400 – £60,000 per annum

The team/department 

In the Communications directorate at the FCA we change opinions and behaviours to enable a fair and thriving financial services market for the good of consumers and the economy. It’s an exciting time as we’re expanding our team and changing how we do things to deliver more engaging, insight-led, audience focused communications. If you want to be part of a supportive and fun team, work across a wide range of issues and are ready to be challenged, curious and creative then come and join us.

This role of Product Owner supports the digital development, testing and maintenance of the FCA’s website and all websites within our estate, to support FCA aims and meet users’ needs. The FCA website is our key platform to reach and engage firms and wider stakeholders – with millions of visitors every year and complex legislation around accessibility, copyright, and data sharing to comply with.

As a technology platform independent of FCA systems, the role holder will support the technical aspects of maintaining, testing, and developing the site and working on related project deliverables. They will work closely and collaborate with technology teams across the organisation and report into the Lead Product Owner for the FCA website.

This role is part of a small Website Development team, part of the Marketing, Digital & Events function in the wider Communications Directorate. The role has line management responsibilities of an Associate and will deputise for the Lead Product Owner when required.

What you will be doing (the role)  

• Website development: Working with the Lead Product Owner, Associate and business stakeholders to identify requirements for the backlog (JIRA), optimise communications digital products, validate ideas and user feedback, support business acceptance testing for new product features 

• Development and change projects: Collaborative working with product owners and technical experts across the FCA on IT requirements, working with other product groups on integrations (APIs, webforms) and owns delivery of assigned workstreams

• Maintenance and resilience: Leading on BAU maintenance, patching releases (outside of business hours), workarounds, and issue management – oversight of day-to-day support provided by the Associate

• Evaluation and insight: Using user-centred design principles to develop and deliver the website, ongoing evaluation to continue to meet user needs by reviewing feedback and analytics and adapting to make improvements as needed

• Project management: Working in an agile environment, participating in all scrum meetings, ensuring projects are on track and escalating issues appropriately and in a timely way

• Best practice and capability building: Incorporating SEO and accessibility standards into requirements. Creating wiki documentation (Confluence) for the team, training digital editors on new functionality

What you will get from the role  

You will be working in a supportive and fast-paced communications environment, with the opportunity to be involved in a wide variety of projects to innovate and continuously improve the FCA website and have the opportunity to work with others, learn and progress your career. 

Core benefits that you will receive as standard are:  

• 25 days holiday per year plus bank holidays

• Private healthcare with Bupa  

• A non-contributory Pension of at least 8% of basic salary each month (there are several contribution levels that increase depending on your age – up to 12% a month once you reach age 35)  

• Life assurance of eight times your basic salary  

• Income protection  

We support hybrid working which means you will be able to work from home up to 60% of the time over a month with the remainder of your time in one of our three office locations.  

The skills and experience you will have  

Minimum  

We are a signatory to the Government’s Disability Confident scheme. This means that we will offer an interview to disabled candidates entering under the scheme, who best meet the minimum criteria for a role. 

• Experience of assisting a Lead or Senior Product Owner to deliver change across a range of digital and website products, using agile methodologies 

• Experience of working with Content Management Systems  

• Experience of writing user stories, acceptance criteria and testing 

Essential

• Proven experience in a similar development delivery role, testing and maintenance of effective website products, using agile working methodologies

• Experience of release planning and testing to accept user stories

• Ability to analyse and breakdown larger workstreams (Epics) into development stories

• Good project management, multitasking, and ability to manage conflicting priorities – working on BAU, live service and projects for teams

• Can weigh up options, risks and challenges, to make recommendations and final decisions to innovate and develop new tools and functionality

• Results orientated with excellent verbal and written communication and interpersonal skills

• Able to build relationships and work effectively with others at all levels across the business

• Quality conscious in all aspects of work and a ‘finisher’ with the drive to push projects and work through to completion

About the FCA   

The FCA regulates the conduct of nearly 45,000 firms in the UK to ensure our financial markets are honest, fair and competitive. We do this to make sure markets work well for individuals, businesses and the economy as a whole. For more information on what we do, our three-year strategy can be found here.  

The FCA's Values & Diversity  

Our ambition is to cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences and similarities enable us to be a better organisation – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation, and delivers better regulation.  

The FCA is committed to achieving greater diversity across all levels of the organisations. Given this, we particularly welcome applications from women, disabled and minority ethnic candidates for our role.   

Flexible working

We welcome applications from candidates who are looking for flexible arrangements.  Many of our staff work flexibly including working part-time, staggered hours, and job shares.  We can’t promise to give you exactly what you want but we won’t judge you for asking.    
  

Multi-location

As part of the FCA’s on-going commitment to develop our national presence, most of our vacancies are now open to working in our Edinburgh, Leeds, or London offices. This means that as part of the application process you will be able to select your preference of which office location you would like to work from.   

Useful information  

 Applications for this role close at 23:59 on Wednesday 13th November 2024.

This role is graded as Senior Associate – Corporate.

This role is available on a 12-Month Fixed Term Contract.

Got a question?    

If you are interested in learning more about the role please contact: 

• For internal applicants, please contact Melanie Dubock at [email protected]

• For external applicants, please contact Ifrah Azam at [email protected]

What to expect from our interview process  

The interview process will be over one or two stages where your core competencies will be assessed.

Application support  

We want to remove any possible barriers and are committed to providing a wide range of reasonable adjustments so that you can keep the focus on your conversations and be at your best.  

If you have an accessibility requirement, disability, or condition that means you might require changes to the recruitment process, please contact your recruiter to discuss this further. Our aim is to make your application as easy and comfortable as possible, and your recruiter will be happy to work with you to make any necessary arrangements where possible.