Franchise Brands plc
Product Development Manager
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Product Development Manager
Franchise Brands
Location - Remote with travel to Macclesfield
Full time, permanent
Salary: £70,000 - £95,000 DOE + benefits
Franchise Brands is an international, multi-brand franchisor focused on building market-leading businesses, primarily through a franchise model. The Group has a combined network of more than 625 franchisees across seven brands in the UK, North America and Europe.
Our market-leading brands include Metro Rod, Metro Plumb, Willow Pumps, Filta and Pirtek in Europe. They benefit from the Group's central support services, including Franchise Support, National Sales and Account Management, Information Technology, Marketing, Finance, Recruitment and HR.
What does it entail?
We are looking for an experienced Product Development Manager to lead the technical delivery and continued development of our enterprise-scale work management platform, used by multiple clients across a range of industries.
This is a people-management role with strong technical depth. You will provide day-to-day leadership across development, analysis, testing and product disciplines, translating product and client requirements into secure, maintainable and deliverable technical outcomes.
Working closely with Product, Engineering, Project Management, Support and business stakeholders, you will guide solution design, strengthen engineering practices, remove delivery obstacles and protect the integrity of the core platform. Product and commercial awareness remain important, but the primary focus is technical leadership, engineering quality, team capability and dependable delivery.
Key responsibilities and accountabilities:
Technical Leadership & Solution Oversight
- You’ll be the technical compass for the team, guiding ideas from initial requirement through to successful release and support.
- You’ll challenge solutions, untangle complex problems and help shape secure, scalable technology built to last.
- Working alongside senior developers and technical specialists, you’ll influence key decisions across architecture, integrations, data and performance, champion great engineering practices and keep technical debt firmly on the radar.
Delivery Management & Engineering Governance
- You’ll keep delivery moving and the backlog healthy, turning plans into clear, achievable and testable work.
- Working across project and engineering teams, you’ll spot risks early, remove blockers and keep everyone sighted on progress.
- You’ll bring just enough process to keep things controlled without getting tangled in red tape - and ensure every release is properly tested, documented and ready for the real world.
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People Leadership & Capability Development
- You’ll lead a talented multidisciplinary team, giving people the clarity, coaching and confidence to do their best work.
- Through regular one-to-ones, mentoring and meaningful development opportunities, you’ll grow capability and encourage people to challenge ideas, solve problems together and take ownership.
- You’ll also help shape the team’s future through recruitment, onboarding, succession planning and smart capacity management.
Product Direction, Prioritisation & Stakeholder Collaboration
- You’ll help steer the platform roadmap, balancing brilliant ideas with technical reality, commercial value and operational risk.
- You’ll juggle core-product improvements, client needs, technical debt and defect fixes, ensuring the right work gets attention at the right time.
- As the bridge between technical and non-technical teams, you’ll turn complexity into plain English, explain the trade-offs and bring practical solutions - not just problems - to the table.
About You
Essential Skills & Experience:
- Substantial experience delivering enterprise B2B software in a technical leadership, software development management, engineering management or comparable role.
- A good degree in Computing or a similar technical subject.
- Strong practical understanding of software architecture, application design, integrations, databases, APIs, source control, testing and deployment practices.
- The ability to review technical proposals, identify risks and trade-offs, and guide teams towards pragmatic solutions.
- Experience managing and developing software professionals, including objective setting, coaching, one-to-ones and performance management.
- Experience managing delivery backlogs and coordinating work across development, analysis, testing, product and project disciplines.
- Experience establishing or improving engineering-quality practices, including code review and automated testing.
- Experience delivering software for multiple clients or balancing a shared platform with client-specific requirements.
- Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain complex technical matters to non-technical audiences.
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Desirable Skills & Experience:
- Multi-tenant SaaS or configurable enterprise-platform experience.
- Experience modernising or incrementally improving a legacy PHP application or comparable established codebase.
- Azure DevOps or similar tooling across backlog, source control, build, test and release management.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated regression testing, observability and release governance.
- Exposure to cloud-hosted services, integration platforms, data migration or third-party system integration.
- Experience of work management, field service, workflow or operational-process platforms.
- Product-management or commercial experience sufficient to contribute to roadmap, value and prioritisation decisions.
- Experience using AI-assisted development, testing or analysis tools within appropriate quality, security and governance controls.
What You'll Bring:
- You’ll bring sound technical judgement, clear leadership and a knack for bringing order to complexity.
- You’ll know how to keep delivery moving without compromising quality, security or long-term maintainability, balancing customer and commercial needs with sensible technical decisions.
- Most importantly, you’ll be a natural collaborator who can influence different audiences, empower technical specialists and turn tricky problems into practical solutions.
What you’ll receive:
- 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays
- Royal London company pension
- Group Life Assurance
- Company events
- Laptop and company mobile
- Free eye tests / subsidy for glasses
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Occupational Health support
- Employee discounts platform
- Commitment to career progression, training, learning and development
We are an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.
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