Principal Product Manager
£70,000 to £80,000 plus great benefits, including up to 10% employer pension contributions, private healthcare, and a company car or car allowance (Work Level 4)
Manchester city centre (hybrid working)

We’re open to applications from candidates who may require flexible working arrangements, such as condensed working hours for a maximum of 3 days part-time. You’ll be able to discuss your flexible working requirements during the interview process and at offer stage.

We’re looking for a Principal Product Manager to join our Digital Technology & Data (DT&D) team to help us deliver on the exciting growth strategies formed across the products in our Co-op Food Digital Experience domain. In this role you’ll work in a hybrid way – splitting your time between home and the office based on the needs of our teams and your own leadership style (find out more about our hybrid working policy at colleagues.coop.co.uk/hybrid-working-policy).

As a Principal Product Manager at Co-op you’ll form part of our domain leadership team and be responsible for the product practice, supporting colleagues in developing and implementing strategies for e-commerce, our Co-op app, and ‘coop.co.uk’. We’ll look to you to help colleagues to define and refine these strategies, turning them into roadmaps that prioritise the needs of our colleagues, customers, and member-owners. You’ll also be responsible for championing the value of user-centred and effective product practices across the wider business and communicating to senior/executive-level partners the value that our teams provide. It’s so important that our colleagues can work in an environment that encourages collaboration and supports them in their development, and you’ll play a key role in ensuring this.

What you’ll do

• Collaborate with partners across our E-Commerce, Food, and Membership teams to set clear and consistent performance measures, outcomes, and goals for our
  products
• Secure long and short-term investment by communicating our needs in Co-op governance forums (you’ll also enable Product Managers to do this)
• Provide frameworks, tools, and support to Product Managers; helping them to set product roadmaps and strategies and communicate these effectively
• Line manage up to four of our Product Managers, supporting them (and the wider team) in their development
• Work alongside other Principal colleagues (e.g. Engineering, Design, and Delivery) to help our teams set and deliver on commitments, maintain a positive and effective working environment, and continuously improve ways of working
• Co-ordinate and align the strategy of the products in our teams with other product and platform roadmaps
• Share and demonstrate to senior/executive-level colleagues the value our products provide across Co-op
• Support our product community of practice, sharing your knowledge and experiences with colleagues

This role would suit people who have

• Significant experience in customer-facing product management, with a proven ability to manage and co-ordinate multiple roadmaps across multiple teams
• Experience working in environments with varied levels of digital technology and agile maturity
• Experience using frameworks at scale to align multiple teams to a shared outcome/goal, and the ability to create and carry-out start-up and scale-up growth strategies
• A solid understanding of the processes and stages involved with delivering re-platforming projects
• Good leadership, coaching, and mentoring skills, and experience supporting colleagues in their development
• Good communication skills, with the ability to translate technical language for a non-technical audience
• Good relationship-building and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence and challenge people inclusively

We know that some candidates are less likely to apply for a role if they don’t meet all the criteria in the job description. At Co-op, we're committed to building a diverse and inclusive working environment, so if you'd like to apply for this role but your experience doesn't quite meet every point, we'd still encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for the job or other roles we have available.

Why Co-op?

As a Co-op colleague, we can offer you a competitive salary and great benefits package which includes 30% off Co-op branded products in our food stores (as well as other discounts on Co-op products and services). You’ll also get:

• Private healthcare
• A company car or £6,000 car allowance
• An annual bonus (based on personal and business performance)
• 28 days holiday (rising to 32 with service) plus bank holidays
• A pension with up to 10% employer contributions
• Access to a subsidised onsite gym (at our Manchester HQ)
• Coaching and training to support your career development
• Reforge – full access to world-leading product management resources
• Wagestream – a money management app that gives you access to a percentage of your pay as you earn it
• YuLife – an app that rewards you for exercising with discounts and vouchers for your favourite brands

Building an inclusive work environment

At Co-op, we’re proud to do things a different way. As one of the world’s largest co-operatives, owned by millions of members, community is at the heart of what we do. Since our Co-op was founded in 1844, we’ve had a clear social purpose, and everything we do as a business helps to build a fairer world for our members, customers, colleagues, and communities.

We’re actively building diverse teams and we welcome applications from everyone. If you have a disability, we can make reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process according to your needs. We're also part of the Disability Confident scheme, meaning we'll always offer an interview to disabled candidates who apply through the scheme if they meet the minimum criteria for a job.

We'll ask whether you’d like to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme when you apply.

If we invite you to take part in the recruitment process for any of our jobs, we’ll ask you if you need any reasonable adjustments to enable you to participate.

You can find out more about our recruitment process at jobs.coop.co.uk/apply-process.

You can find out more about the Disability Confident scheme and all our commitments to diversity and inclusion at colleagues.coop.co.uk/diversity-inclusion-and-wellbeing.