What are we looking for?

Essential for the role:

• Deep Workday expertise across HCM, Payroll, Absence and Compensation modules.
• Experience with Workday feature release cycles and SaaS platform update adoption.
• Functional knowledge of HCM and Payroll processes, including employee lifecycle, absence, compensation and pay.
• Proven experience as a Product Owner, Functional Lead or Business Analyst working with Agile teams and methodologies.
• Significant experience in defining and managing requirements using recognised techniques.
• Strong experience of backlog ownership, prioritisation and refinement aligned to business value and strategy.
• Strong Agile delivery experience, particularly within Scrum and/or Kanban.
• Ability to translate business needs into clear, prioritised and value-driven outcomes.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, including negotiation of competing priorities.
• Experience working closely with Product Managers, Delivery Managers, Business Analysts and technical teams in cross-functional delivery environments.
• Ability to define and refine user stories and acceptance criteria to ensure sprint readiness.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and decision-making skills in complex environments.
• Ability to support delivery through QA/UAT, sign-off and deployment.
• Strong communication, collaboration and presentation skills.
• Highly organised, self-disciplined with strong planning and time management skills.
• Consistent approach with solid attention to detail.
• Experience of working with Agile development teams, including third parties and offshore colleagues where applicable.
• Experience using tools such as Jira, Confluence, Teams and Miro.

Beneficial to have:

• Experience acting as a functional SME or domain lead.
• Experience of supporting or overseeing system configuration and tenant administration responsibilities.
• Experience with HR reporting and analytics.
• Experience working with Managed Service Providers (AMS) or implementation partners.
• Understanding of tiered support models and live-service environments.
• Experience in HR transformation, enterprise system implementation or large-scale digital transformation programmes.
• Experience mentoring Product Owners or Business Analysts.
• Familiarity with business architecture, end-to-end process design and change management in enterprise system environments.
• Product Owner, Agile BA or relevant Workday certifications.
• Any systems analysis experience is useful, e.g. logical data design or understanding of schemas and workflows.

Why join us?

This is an opportunity to take ownership of a major enterprise platform at a pivotal stage in its evolution. The foundations have been laid, and now we need an experienced leader who can optimise our initial implementation and turn our vision into business value.

You'll work with senior stakeholders across the organisation, influence strategic decisions and help shape the future of critical corporate technology services that support the people who power football across England.

We are committed to ensuring everyone can flourish in their roles. To achieve this, we have unique office spaces under the arch of the iconic Wembley National Stadium, which is the home of English Football. We are also delighted to offer a world-class Elite Performance Centre, St. George's Park in Staffordshire, which is an exceptional setting to develop and inspire high-performing England teams and leaders.

We pride ourselves on offering a competitive salary as well as great opportunities to develop and grow in your role. But that is not all; we also have a range of exciting benefits, some of which can be found below:

• Access to event day tickets at Wembley Stadium, alongside a host of regular internal events throughout the season, encourages you to connect and learn with your colleagues and look after your mental health and well-being.
• Free, nutritious lunches at Wembley Stadium and St. George's Park.
• Free private medical cover.
• A contributory pension scheme.
• An additional 'Thank You' day's leave, volunteering days, as well as 25 days of annual leave (based on a full-time, permanent contract)
• A hybrid working model which offers greater flexibility.

Currently, we are working within a hybrid working model whereby the expectation is to work from your contractual location for part of the week, and as and when required by the team. The remaining days can be worked remotely. We will continue to monitor this model, and it may be adjusted in future if deemed necessary. The contractual location of this role can be found on the FA Careers page.

We are a diverse workplace, aspiring to represent football across the country. The Football Association actively promotes inclusion and diversity, encouraging you to be the best version of yourself at work.

We welcome applications from everyone and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. If you have any particular requirements in respect of the recruitment or interview process, please mention this during your application.