Digital Product Manager

Product Manager - Platform Technology

Employment Type: Contract Inside IR35

Duration: 10 Months

Umbrella Rate: £550/day

Location: Exeter (Hybrid, 3 days onsite per week)

Clearance Level: Eligible for SC

Opportunity Overview

We are working with a leading UK organisation to find an experienced Product Manager for a key role within their Platform Technology function. Our client is undergoing a significant technology modernisation programme and needs a skilled product professional to help shape and improve the internal platforms their developers, scientists and service teams depend on every day.

This is a rare opportunity to practise real product management in a complex, data-intensive environment - working at the heart of a mission-driven organisation where the work genuinely matters.

About the Role

The Platform Technology team is responsible for shared, cross-cutting capabilities including developer tools, APIs, data pipelines and infrastructure services. The incoming Product Manager will be responsible for making these platforms reliable, discoverable and enabling - reducing delivery friction, improving user experience, and helping downstream teams ship faster and more safely.

Job Function

• Support the development of a business case to invest in service enhancements and engagements with third-party suppliers.
• Own the roadmap and backlog for one or more shared technology platforms and deliver to the agreed product vision.
• Work with engineers, architects and delivery teams to deliver incremental improvements that make platforms easier to use and maintain.
• Understand internal users, from developers to operations staff, and translate their needs into clear priorities.
• Investigate and develop measurable service outcomes (adoption, usability, performance) and use data to track progress.
• Balance short-term reliability with long-term sustainability and compliance.
• Facilitate collaboration across technical and non-technical stakeholders; communicate trade-offs transparently.
• Champion product-led, user-informed, iterative ways of working in a complex, legacy/brownfield environment.

Requirements

• Proven experience managing developer infrastructure products and associated cloud technologies (e.g. AWS, Azure, shared services).
• Experience successfully managing commercial and bought-in services.
• Ability to apply and adapt Agile and Lean practices in an engineering-focused team.
• Strong understanding of user-centred product development - even when the 'users' are other engineers.
• Skilled at prioritising by outcome using approaches such as impact vs. effort or cost-of-delay.
• Confident working with cross-disciplinary teams and senior technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable operating in environments with legacy systems, competing priorities and incomplete information.
• Excellent communicator - able to translate complex technical issues into clear decisions and trade-offs.

Why This Role?

Our client operates at significant scale, managing vast volumes of data in support of critical national and scientific services. The technology estate is complex and established - this isn't a greenfield startup - but that's exactly what makes it interesting. You'll be joining at a moment of genuine appetite for change, working alongside engineers and scientists who are deeply invested in what they build.

If you're looking for a role where platform product management actually means something, this is it.