Hive Science
Technical Programme Manager, Product (London, UK)
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
London Based Technical Project Manager Role
London based technical project manager role who will continue to evolve Hive's product, engineering & science teams in ways of working. Ensure that these multi-disciplinary teams are all pulling in the same direction, with the right priorities at each release of our technology. Own the delivery process end-to-end: sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog management, definition of done, code review governance, technical debt tracking, and release coordination. Working across Hive's various releases & priorities.
This is not a project coordinator role. We need someone with a strong enough technical understanding to challenge estimates, spot risks early, ask the right questions in a stand-up, and understand why a task is blocked. You don't need to be an SME in every discipline — but you need to understand enough about full stack engineering, DevOps, MLOps, and AI / data science to manage the work credibly and earn the respect of the team.
What You'll Be Doing
As Technical Programme Manager, you will be the operational heartbeat of Hive product. You will ensure the organisation runs with clarity and focus — that the right work is being done, in the right order, by the right people, and that nothing important falls through the cracks.
You will constantly be across multiple concurrent workstreams spanning platform engineering, AI/ML model development, product build, and infrastructure. We can't define everything you will be doing because the product landscape moves fast — you need to be the kind of person who thrives in ambiguity, adapts quickly, and brings calm and structure wherever you go.
Technical Programme Management
- Proven experience as a Technical Programme Manager, Senior Scrum Master, or Delivery Lead in a software productor technology company — ideally in an early-stage or high-growth startup environment.
- Strong track record of managing delivery across multiple concurrent technical workstreams simultaneously, including engineering, infrastructure, and data/ML workstreams.
- Deep fluency in agile delivery methodologies — Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid approaches — with strong opinions about what works and what doesn't in a fast-paced environment.
- Experience owning and enforcing Definition of Ready, Definition of Done, sprint planning, retrospectives, and backlog grooming at an organisational level.
- Demonstrable experience managing technical debt as a first-class delivery concern, not an afterthought.
Technical Understanding
- Strong enough technical understanding of full stack engineering (frontend, backend APIs, cloud infrastructure) to manage estimates, challenge scope, and understand blockers without needing line-by-line explanation.
- Familiarity with DevOps and infrastructure concepts — CI/CD pipelines, IaC, containerisation, cloud environments — sufficient to understand the work being done and the risks involved.
- Working knowledge of MLOps and AI/ML model development lifecycles — understanding how models move from research and prototyping through to production deployment, and what the handoff process involves.
- Familiarity with LLM/GPT product development — understanding the nature of building AI-powered features, agentic workflows, and generative product experiences, including the unique delivery challenges they present (probabilistic outputs, evaluation complexity, governance requirements).
- Comfort engaging with technical conversations at a conceptual level — not needing to write code, but needing to understand what engineers and scientists mean when they describe their work.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Delivery Tools & Practices
- Strong experience with project and delivery management tooling — Notion experience is a preference; the ideal candidate has used it and is comfortable building and maintaining delivery workflows within it.
- Experience with engineering workflow tools such as GitHub, Linear, Jira, or equivalent — understanding how development tickets, PRs, and code review processes are managed.
- Ability to design clear, practical delivery processes that a technical team will actually follow — not over-engineered bureaucracy, but the right amount of structure for a high-performing startup team.
Communication & Leadership
- Exceptional communication skills — able to run a tight, effective stand-up, write a clear delivery update, and have a difficult conversation about a slipping deadline with equal confidence.
- Strong relationship-building skills — able to earn the trust and respect of highly technical team members without a technical background of their own.
- Calm under pressure — able to re-plan, reprioritise, and re-communicate clearly when things don't go to plan, which in a startup is often.
- A proactive, ownership mindset — not waiting to be asked, but continuously looking ahead for what might go wrong and acting on it before it does.
Responsibilities
Delivery Management & Sprint Execution
- Own and run the daily stand-up across our product team — keeping them tight, purposeful, and focused on blockers and progress rather than status theatre.
- Lead sprint planning sessions: working with the SMEs to define, size, and sequence work into well-structured, achievable sprints.
- Maintain and manage the backlog across all workstreams — ensuring cards are well-defined, correctly prioritised, and always ready to be picked up.
- Track sprint velocity, identify delivery risks early, and proactively escalate or re-plan when commitments are at risk.
- Own the sprint retrospective process — driving continuous improvement in how the team works, not just what they build.
- Produce clear, concise sprint reports and delivery updates for the leadership team.
Definition Of Ready, Definition Of Done & Engineering Best Practice
- Own and enforce the Definition of Ready — ensuring every card entering a sprint is properly scoped, estimated, has clear acceptance criteria, and has all dependencies identified before work begins.
- Own and enforce the Definition of Done — ensuring code review, testing, documentation, sign-off, and deployment criteria are consistently met before any work is marked complete.
- Champion best practice in sprint hygiene: well-written cards, sensible timing estimations, appropriate task breakdown, and clear ownership.
- Monitor and drive adherence to code review processes — ensuring reviews are completed in a timely manner, feedback is constructive, and quality standards are upheld.
- Maintain a live technical debt register and ensure technical debt work is a standing, visible part of every sprint — never deprioritised into oblivion.
- Ensure architectural and governance standards are reflected in the way work is defined and delivered.
Cross-Team Coordination & Dependency Management
- Coordinate delivery across all disciplines identifying cross-team dependencies and ensuring they are surfaced and resolved early.
- Manage the handoff between social science direction, data science model development and engineering productionisation — ensuring the work we do from research to production has clear acceptance criteria, deployment plans, and sign-off processes.
- Coordinate delivery across new product workstreams and core platform/pipeline work — ensuring neither track blocks the other and that shared infrastructure decisions are made collaboratively.
- Act as the primary point of contact for delivery status across the organisation — giving the leadership team real-time visibility into what is being built, when it will land, and what is at risk.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Estimation, Roadmap Planning & Capacity Management
- Work closely with the SMEs to build reliable delivery estimates for new product features, infrastructure work, and AI/ML model development.
- Maintain a rolling view of team capacity — accounting for planned leave, context-switching costs, and the reality of working in a fast-paced startup environment.
- Support the Leadership team in translating the product and technology roadmaps into sprint-level delivery plans with realistic timelines.
- Challenge and interrogate estimates constructively — asking the right questions to surface hidden complexity, unclear requirements, or unrealistic assumptions before they become delivery problems.
- Track actuals against estimates overtime to improve planning accuracy and build a clearer model of team velocity across different types of work.
Tooling, Process & Documentation
- Own Hive's delivery tooling — with a preference for Notion as the primary workspace for sprint boards, backlog management, documentation, and delivery tracking.
- Establish and maintain clear, consistent process documentation: how sprints work, how cards are written, how work is reviewed and signed off, and how releases are managed.
- Ensure the team is working from a single source of truth — that the state of every workstream is visible, up to date, and accessible to anyone who needs it.
- Identify tooling gaps and recommend improvements to how the team plans, tracks, and communicates work.
Stakeholder Communication & Reporting
- Provide the leadership team with regular, clear delivery updates — translating complex multi-workstream progress into concise, accurate summaries.
- Flag risks, blockers, and scope changes proactively — with a proposed solution wherever possible, not just a problem statement.
Overall Work Experience & Additional Details
You may have come from a product engineering team at a scale-up, a delivery lead role at a technology consultancy, or from a startup where you owned the entire delivery function yourself. You understand what good engineering delivery looks like — not just the process, but the culture — and you know how to bring that out in a team without slowing them down.
As a fast-paced startup, each day is different from the one before. We're nimble and creative, and value intellectual humility. We work really hard because we're all 100% dedicated to the future we're building. Our work is stimulating, challenging, and exciting. And our team is awesome. At Hive we only hire exceptional people, so you'll be in good company — surrounded by passionate, insanely smart people who want to build the future of customer intelligence.
Specifically we're looking for someone who will thrive in this type of environment:
- Fast-paced startup with competing demands and multiple priorities ongoing
- A natural organiser who brings clarity and calm to complexity
- A 'solve the problem' mentality — focused on unblocking progress, not documenting obstacles
- Scrappy and creative, but also structured and reliable when the team needs a steady hand
- Strong passion for the Hive Science mission and a love of the scientific
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills
Location