Digital Product Owner (API)

Job Description Job Title: Digital Product Owner (API) Location: UK - Flexible (Leamington Spa / Edinburgh / London / home based) Department / Team: Digital Product Management Reports to: Digital Product Manager About the department The Digital Product Management function is responsible for the product vision, strategy, and roadmap of the Digital Innovation Group (DIG), ensuring that the software product set adheres to agreed design principles, maximises value, and achieves the expected benefits of customers and other key stakeholders. The team’s responsibilities and activities are varied, and comprise market & customer insights, product analysis & design, product strategy & direction, product ownership and customer support. The team is made up of Product Managers, Technical Product Owners, Business Analysts, together with a data model manager, a Third Party Integrations Manager and a Technical Author. The DIG has 2 typical types of Customers: 1) external financial services organisations with a strategic partnership with abrdn, providing financial advice or direct-to-consumer services, and driving assets into the group; and 2) internal abrdn business areas which require modern, engaging customer (consumer or institution) facing experiences and journeys. A current priority for the department is driving and shaping the Digital Eco-System, a suite of independent components which can be readily assembled and configured into modern, engaging customer experiences and compelling propositions, then easily deployed, maintained and supported in a robust, scalable cloud-based architecture. Role Purpose The Digital Product Owner (API) reports to Digital Product Manager, shaping and driving forward our service ecosystem to maximise the value we realise from our investments in API technologies. Working at an individual, team, and organisational level, the successful API Product Owner will accelerate the flow of value to customers with careful prioritisation: balancing threshold, performance, and excitement attributes with risk, cost of delay, and dependencies. With a working understanding of REST API design, security, and documentation, this role requires a passion for creating flexible technology building blocks, the discipline to work to a budget, and the pragmatism to deliver to a deadline. This role is focused on a sophisticated product set to enable Financial Advice & Planning, Investment & Asset Management, direct to consumer advised and non-advised experiences, hybrid variations of these, and the underpinning tools, data services, regulatory and operational capabilities & services required by professional organisations in the U.K. and worldwide, including abrdn. Key Outcomes Shape team product backlogs to deliver business value:

• Write clear product backlog items adhering to the “definition of ready” and incorporating testable outcomes as part of a hierarchy of features and epics.
• Manage a budget for implementation of a feature or roadmap.
• Where appropriate, adopt lean principles for exploring new customer requirements based on tracked, testable hypotheses.
• Participate in regular Agile ceremony with a multi-discipline delivery team including stand-ups, planning, demos, and retrospectives.
• Engage with Analysts, Architects, Designers, Developers, and QA teams to understand the “art of the possible”, balancing risks, delivery time, and quality to maximise value.
• Support development teams to make meaningful, pragmatic estimates of work and risk by explaining the context of the problem domain and exploring viable solutions.
• Report on the progress made delivering new features, escalating key risks and issues to project managers.
• Work with the API Practice Lead to:
  • understand technology changes, accelerators, and risks, shaping our API endpoints for long-term support.
  • set business-appropriate standards for development and documentation of APIs.
• Deliver feature-rich, responsive, and documented services that work across a range of user needs across integration, web, and mobile clients.
• Drive down cycle time between story inception and production delivery.
• Remain in frequent communication with delivery squads, the wider Product team, and other stakeholders.

Evangelise an API product set:

• Articulate the value proposition of an API service library across mobile and web platforms to both internal and external stakeholders.
• Deliver a fantastic developer experience for applications consuming APIs.
• Set a clear product roadmap with relevant migration and/or upgrade paths.
• Maintain excellent documentation describing support lifetimes of API versions, including release notes, known issues, and quality metrics.
• Pitch new products or features to senior management for investment approval.

Skills & Experience

• Experience working in an Agile development environment.
• A broad awareness of API technology:
  • REST/OpenAPI
  • Documentation and the developer experience
  • Security
  • Synchronisation and other common integration challenges, and patterns to address them
• Evidenced experience balancing technical, quality, budget, and dependencies in prioritisation:
  • Challenging stakeholders to work within the constraints you set.
  • Evaluating changes in the requirements landscape and their impact on delivery.
  • Evidencing problems and raising these for broader consideration across Project Managers and Senior Management.
• Familiar with the purpose and use of software development tools:
  • Source control and branches
  • Continuous integration and automated quality assurance
• Excellent interpersonal skills, able to interact effectively with stakeholders from business and domain specialists to deep technologists.
• Experience delivering complex software solutions for financial services / advice / wealth management customers, or willing to learn the details of these domains.
• Personable communicator able to encourage and motivate others to improve ways of working
• Good verbal skills – ability to readily explain the benefits and characteristics of the API service endpoints.
• Excellent written skills – ability to document requirements.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills.
• Sharp analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to independently prioritise and carry out work as part of a team.
• Attention to detail.

Our Benefits There's more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported. When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around, including 40 days annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance-based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount site amongst many others. How we create value Our strategic drivers are the foundations from which we deliver for all our stake holders: High Impact Intelligence, Enduring Relationships, Connections without borders and Future fit. We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment. We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance. We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone. If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.