Product Manager
PRODUCT MANAGER - ALPHA PHASE, PUBLIC SECTOR DIGITAL SERVICE
Rate: £478/day (Inside IR35)
A specialist digital consultancy is looking for an experienced Product Manager to shape the alpha phase of a public-facing guidance tool. The product will help parents and schools understand and manage the complaints process, building on insights from a discovery phase completed earlier this year. This is a hands-on product role within a multidisciplinary agile team, running through to mid-October with potential to extend.
WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING
- Owning the product vision and roadmap for the alpha phase, translating discovery findings into clear hypotheses to test and validate
- Defining and prioritising the backlog, making tough calls on what's in and out of scope to deliver meaningful outcomes within the alpha window
- Working closely with user researchers and designers to ensure the product is grounded in real user needs from parents, schools, and the wider complaints ecosystem
- Collaborating with the Delivery Manager to balance ambition with pragmatism and keep the team focused
- Engaging with client stakeholders to align on priorities, manage expectations, and build confidence in the product direction
- Making evidence-based decisions on which prototypes and concepts to take forward, kill, or iterate on
- Ensuring the alpha meets GDS service standard assessment criteria and is set up for a strong beta case
- Communicating the product story clearly to technical and non-technical audiences alike
ABOUT YOU
- Proven experience as a Product Manager on public sector digital services, ideally through alpha or beta phases
- Strong understanding of GDS service standards and user-centred design principles
- Comfortable working in multidisciplinary agile teams and making prioritisation decisions under uncertainty
- Experience translating discovery insights into testable hypotheses and shaping prototypes that validate real user needs
- Confident engaging senior stakeholders and articulating product decisions with clarity and conviction
- Familiar with the education, complaints, or public guidance space (nice to have, not essential)
- Pragmatic and outcomes-focused, you care about solving the right problem, not just shipping features