Product Manager

Product Manager

The current processing platform processes over 750million transactions per year, over different channels including open-loop card schemes, 80+ closed-loop card schemes, various funding channels and UK and SEPA bank payment rails. This is used by a wide range of programmes including fintech challenger banks, travel products, employee benefits, retail gifting.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a product manager to add real value to a platform used by millions of users.

Part of a fast-moving environment where key objectives include:

• Management of processing business rules product domain covering:
• o Action the strategic objective of breaking down the existing processing monolith system by re-building new and improved micro-service components using a product approach
• o Added value business rules applied during transaction processing including card acceptance management, expense spend policies, transaction fees etc.
• o Ensuring solutions are scalable, robust and fit for purpose
• Support the business transformation into a more product centric organisation to increase focus on better services and more balanced priorities on internal needs
• Leading the product domain cross functional team from a business perspective
• Responsible for leading innovation in the domain
• Collaborating with stakeholders, clients and internal departments to capture business requirements.
• Prioritising the backlog with a focus on maximising value

Responsible for (direct reports?)

0-2 reports – initially no reports but opportunity for management of reports in the team (e.g. analysts or junior supporting roles)

Experience & Knowledge

• Demonstrable experience in the card processing space, ideally with Mastercard with strong coverage of features listed in the product domain (see objective section)
• Minimum of 3 years product management experience
• Demonstrable experience in scaling a product
• Can give examples of key deliverables, explain their role and articulate the value delivered to the business
• Experience of working closely with Business Analysts and Developers in a collaborative way
• Can comfortably articulate how card payments function and how the exceptional scenarios are dealt with to avoid financial loss
• Familiar with Agile and Scrum methodologies
• Can assess & carry out data analysis to make better informed decisions
• Experience working in a fast-paced environment, juggling multiple priorities against deadlines

Key Result Areas

• The Product domain delivery of the minimum needs of clients to facilitate the move away from the legacy platform
• Deliverables are operationally supportable, secure and scalable
• Driving continuous improvements across the product domain and solving pain points

Key Tasks

Be the business single point of contact for a specified functional domain.

• Working with the product domain cross functional team to:
• o Capture and document clear user stories or standard feature overview
• o Capture estimates for roadmap and sprint planning
• o Prioritise the backlog to deliver and a focus on adding value to the business
• o Package the service for in terms materials for clients, operations and client delivery team to roll out the feature
• o Where required support and address impediments outside of the team
• o Give the development teams clear business context and measurable business objectives to motivate and get buy in to deliver on time
• Rationalising the business case to prioritise the backlog in line with strategy, including:
• o New features
• o Fixing or optimising existing elements
• o Operational improvements including security, monitoring and visibility into the health and behaviour of the domain.
• Understand business cases and be able to arbitrate between requests, challenging requests where appropriate with relevant data
• Independently managing the implementation of requirements from shaping through to build, acceptance testing and rollout end-to-end.
• Monitor development delivery while identifying, challenging and overcoming delays and obstacles
• Removing impediments and minimizing disruption to maximise development efficiency
• Planning, effort estimations, and status reporting
• Support other team members to achieve company objectives along with promoting a positive collaborative atmosphere
• Packaging of the services/features for clients, operations and the delivery teams to rollout the feature

Skills

• Strong communication and interpersonal skills with teams both onshore and offshore.
• Ability to emphasise with clients and & internal users to better understand their needs and pain points.
• Ability to work with external international clients and 3rd parties in a customer facing business
• Quick learner and self-starter within a fast-paced environment.
• Highly organised, with experience of working within an agile environment
• Leader, inspires team and leads by example
• Positive attitude and outlook, determined, enthusiastic and resilient
• Work independently with agreed remit and autonomy
• Clear concise reporting, outlining key points
• Analytical mind-set and can evaluate the business case/value
• Comfortable being a bridge between the technical and business worlds
• Familiar with JIRA, Confluence and agile/scrum methodologies

Technical skills:

• Experience at a high-level payments scheme standards such as ISO8583 & ISO20022
• Experience with concepts of APIs and webhooks
• Nice to have: able to construct SQL to retrieve data from databases
• Foreign languages a plus: Spanish, Portuguese or French

Additional Information

The role involves meeting clients, requiring occasional travel to either UK, Europe (potentially between 1-3 days), International (exceptional, but can be 3-5 days in duration)