HM Revenue & Customs
Lead Product Manager
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About The Job
Job summary
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At HMRC, we are already one of the most digital advanced tax authorities in the world and have one of the largest IT infrastructures and data sources in the UK. With 50 million customers to serve, over 60 thousand colleagues to support, and £600 billion to collect to fund UK Plc, our IT operation is huge! For those who are up to the challenge, we offer unique and unparalleled opportunities to work with some of the newest technologies and make a real, lasting difference.
We're recruiting for a Lead Product Manager at HMRC Business Tax team (Process Mining) to be part of our highly creative and collaborative teams supporting His Majesty's Revenue and Customs. We are ambitious, and we need a strong product leader to help us achieve the ambitions we have set out in our 2026/27 vision, delivering great outcomes through digital products.
This role needs a strong leader who can challenge, create, and own the product strategy. Your goal is to optimise the overall value of an area of the business tax system by contributing to solving complex and often challenging problems through the creation of great digital products.
Job Description
A Product Lead is responsible for leading a number of product teams within a business area to build and release digital products or services. Product Leads understand the business goals and the high-level user needs for different user groups across the services. Product Leads also understand the organisational and business area strategies, and work with senior leaders and stakeholders to ensure the right types of products and services are being delivered to support the strategies. Product Leads also manage product managers, coach, or mentor them, and support the Head of Profession to build the capability amongst the product management profession.
Person specification
Responsibilities
You will:
- Create the vision, strategy, roadmap and value proposition for a programme or portfolio of digital services, creating achievable and measurable objectives for a portfolio digital service based on transformation programme goals.
- Set product priorities, strategic direction and leadership for a programme or portfolio of products in a transformation programme.
- Create and iterate programme-level roadmaps, reporting and set the agile governance framework for product teams in a programme.
- Lead engagement with Senior Directors, Senior Civil Servants, and stakeholders to shape and influence delivery activity and governance in transformation programmes, in line with the organisation's strategy and objectives.
- Work with other professions leads and teams across HMRC to promote user-centred and agile ways of working, and to ensure the resourcing model for multidisciplinary teams works effectively.
- Lead creation of strategic roadmaps, business cases, funding forecasts and delivery plans to define pipeline of future work in CDIO.
- Accountable for product outcomes within a transformation programme, setting KPIs and performance measures for success.
- Line manages, coach and mentor Grade 7 Product Managers and SO Associate Product Managers, responsible for increasing capability and ensuring product management standards and met.
- Work with Head of Product around recruitment, retention, and upskilling of product managers in HMRC, to define standards and best practice for Product Managers
- Be a leader within local product management communities and other communities of interest across HMRC, managing and organising cross-government conferences and events.
- Coordinate product development across HMRC Lines of Business to identify reuse of components and patterns in services.
- Oversee live services and continuous improvement work for the product /service and management of vendor contracts as and when needed.
- Lead and support multidisciplinary product teams through discovery, alpha, beta, and live phases of development, turning vision into reality and continuously improving.
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Essential Criteria:
- Experience of using lean, agile or user centred design methods (ideally all)
- Experience of building and maintaining positive relationships with senior stakeholders, including negotiating with stakeholders on difficult issues, acting as an escalation point when needed, and being able to influence stakeholders on a portfolio or service strategy.
- Demonstration of the ability to look across a number of products/services in a portfolio, and the wider marketplace, to understand how different products can work together to deliver a wider outcome.
- Experience of successfully prioritising work based on what is valuable to do first across a portfolio/ service/programme, managing dependencies between different products, digital and non-digital channels, et cetera.
- Demonstration of the ability to use qualitative or quantitative research (e.g., customer feedback, market research, service metrics, et cetera) to gain insights on a problem, or potential solutions.
- Experience of coaching, mentoring and line managing others across a digital team in product management roles or other GDaD roles.
- Experience of working with digital teams and other professions to improve ways of working at scale across a number of teams.
- Experience of building capability in others and facilitating learning and development at scale, including of product management frameworks and tools.
- Demonstration of the ability to understand how to measure and track success of a programme and recalibrate areas of the programme to optimise outcomes- including demonstration of understanding the product lifecycle and knowing when to keep going on products and when to stop or pivot.
- Experience of successfully communicating with others to explain problems, present options, setting a direction for moving forward, and getting buy in for recommendations.
Desirable Criteria:
- Significant knowledge of user research, or service, content or interaction design, or software engineering practices, and how product managers can successfully work with these professions to create better products.
- Experience of managing large teams.
- Working knowledge of ITIL v4
Further Location Information
Please ensure that you only apply for a location that you are willing and able to work from, as we will only make one offer of employment. Any additional notes included in a 'Further Location Preferences (optional)' field within the application form, will not be considered. Please be aware that you cannot change your location preference after submitting your application.
Office closures
For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations.
If your location preference is for the following site, it's important to note that this is not a long-term site for HMRC and we will require you to move to a new building in the future, subject to our location strategy and the applicable employee policies at that time.
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This Site Is
Benton Park View, Newcastle - moving to Pilgrims Quarter, Newcastle
You will be given more information about what this means at the job offer stage.
Leeds Locations
Moves Adjustment Payment will be available for this role, provided the successful applicant is a current HMRC colleague in Bradford and meets the eligibility requirements outlined in the HMRC's Moves Adjustment Payment guidance.
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £71,725, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £20,778 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.
We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.
- Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues' Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
- Family friendly policies.
- Personal support.
- Coaching and development.
To find out more about HMRC benefits and find out what it's really like to work for HMRC hear from our insiders or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service
Things you need to know
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection process details
How To Apply
As part of the application process, you will be asked to provide the following:
- A name-blind CV including your job history and previous experiences.
- A 750-word Personal Statement, describing how your skills and experience would make you suitable for the role, and how you meet the Essential Criteria and Person Specification.
Please complete a separate statement (Max 250 words) for the Desirable Criteria where applicable. This is not essential for the role but may be considered by the vacancy-holder where candidates have the same scores at interview.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Sift
In the event of a large number of applications being received, an initial sift may be held on your Personal Statement.
At full sift your CV and your Personal Statement, will be assessed, with the successful candidates being invited to interview.
We may also raise the score required at any stage of the process if we receive a high number of applications.
Interview
During the panel interview, you will be asked experience-based questions to assess what you are capable of.
Interviews will take place via video link. Sift and interview dates to be confirmed. Please note that circumstances may arise that require the planned interview format to change. We will endeavour to provide you with as much notice
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