Akaina Talent
Delivery Manager - Contract
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Delivery Manager (Product Delivery) Contract
Description
We are looking for a delivery-focused Delivery Manager or Business Analyst with strong product exposure to work closely with engineering teams and senior Product Managers to drive execution, manage backlogs and ensure high-quality product delivery. This role is ideal for someone from a Delivery Manager or BA background who has worked in or alongside product teams, and who thrives in the day-to-day mechanics of product development. You will take direction from Senior PMs, expanding on Epics and features into well-structured, actionable tickets, and work closely with the Lead Engineer and team to estimate, refine and unblock delivery.
Backlog Ownership and Prioritisation
- Own and manage the engineering team backlog, ensuring it is well structured, prioritised and aligned to direction set by Senior Product Managers
- Translate Epics and features defined by Senior PMs into clearly scoped, actionable backlog items ready for development
- Apply prioritisation frameworks such as ICE or equivalent to balance impact, effort and urgency
- Continuously refine and reprioritise the backlog based on new insights, dependencies and delivery constraints
- Ensure clear visibility of priorities and trade-offs across stakeholders
Ticket Writing and Requirements Definition
- Write clear, concise and well-structured user stories, tickets and acceptance criteria based on direction from Senior PMs
- Ensure tickets are ready for development (definition of ready) and minimise ambiguity for engineers
- Expand Senior PM Epics and features into appropriately sized, deliverable increments
- Maintain consistency in ticket structure and documentation across teams
- Collaborate with engineering to ensure requirements are technically feasible and well understood
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Estimation, Refinement and Delivery
- Work closely with the Lead Engineer and development team to estimate, refine and size backlog items
- Facilitate and drive backlog refinement sessions, ensuring the team has what it needs to move forward
- Participate actively in agile ceremonies including standups, sprint planning, retrospectives and backlog refinement
- Track progress against sprint goals and proactively identify and unblock blockers and dependencies
- Partner with Lead Engineers and Senior PMs to manage risks, dependencies and timelines
- Ensure delivered work meets acceptance criteria and quality standards
- Support release planning and coordinate launches where required
Product and Technology Ways of Working
- Help standardise ways of working across the engineering and product teams
- Ensure consistency in backlog management, ticket quality and delivery processes
- Work with Senior PMs and Lead Engineers to improve reporting through better ticket labelling and tracking of velocity
- Support and lead estimation processes, ensuring work is appropriately scoped and sized
- Contribute to continuous improvement of delivery processes and team efficiency
Collaboration with Engineering
- Build strong working relationships with engineers and the Lead Engineer
- Stay closely aligned with what is being built, providing clarity and support throughout delivery
- Help resolve ambiguities, answer questions and make timely decisions within your remit
- Understand technical constraints and incorporate them into planning and prioritisation
- Proactively identify and unblock dependencies and issues in partnership with the engineering team
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Data and Continuous Improvement
- Use data and feedback to inform backlog prioritisation and iteration
- Support Senior PMs in defining success criteria for features and ensuring outcomes are measurable
- Support testing approaches including A/B testing where relevant
- Work with data teams to ensure appropriate tracking and visibility of product performance
- Contribute to post-release analysis and continuous improvement cycles
Requirements
- Proven experience as a Delivery Manager, Business Analyst or Junior to Mid-level Product Manager working closely with engineering teams
- Strong experience managing backlogs and writing high-quality user stories and tickets
- Comfortable taking direction from Senior PMs and translating strategic intent into detailed, development-ready work
- Solid understanding of agile delivery practices, ceremonies and estimation techniques
- Experience working closely with engineering leads on refinement, sizing and unblocking
- Experience working with tools such as Azure DevOps, Jira, Notion or similar
- Ability to translate requirements into clear technical deliverables
- Strong organisational skills and attention to detail
- Comfortable working in fast-paced, delivery-focused environments
- Strong communication skills with the ability to work across product and engineering teams
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