Product Owner - Software Focused

Role Summary

We're seeking an experienced Product Owner with a strong software product background to lead the evolution of a suite of mobile, web, and client applications. You'll collaborate closely with stakeholders, architects, and cross-functional Agile teams to define clear product outcomes, craft user-centric requirements, and ship high-quality, scalable features. While the domain includes warehousing and field service operations, this role is primarily software-focused: product strategy, UX, integration, platform architecture, quality, and data-driven decision-making.

What You'll Do

Product Strategy & Discovery

• Partner with stakeholders to understand customer problems and map end-to-end user journeys across mobile, web, and client apps.
• Translate insights into prioritised product roadmaps, release plans, and measurable outcomes (OKRs/KPIs).
• Drive discovery activities (user research, hypothesis framing, spikes, proofs-of-concept) and validate solutions through iterative experimentation.

Requirements & Design

• Convert business and technical needs into well-formed epics, features, and user stories with clear acceptance criteria.
• Apply UX principles to define intuitive workflows and interfaces; produce wireframes and low-fi mockups to align teams quickly.
• Collaborate with architects on solution design: API contracts, data models, event flows, and non-functional requirements (security, performance, scalability).

Agile Delivery & Backlog Ownership

• Act as Product Owner for one or more Agile squads, owning the product backlog, grooming regularly, and ensuring clarity and priority.
• Provide day-to-day guidance on requirements, edge cases, and dependencies; unblock teams swiftly and reduce ambiguity.
• Participate in increment planning, sprint planning, stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives; ensure commitments tie to outcomes.

Quality, Testing & Release Readiness

• Champion quality from the start, collaborating with QA/engineers to define Acceptance Criteria and Acceptance Tests (BDD).
• Support automated testing strategies (unit, integration, contract, end-to-end), test data readiness, and release validation.
• Ensure features meet accessibility and performance standards, and are instrumented for observability (logging, metrics, tracing).

Platform & Integration

• Work with engineering on API-first design, reliable integrations (eg, EDI/REST/GraphQL), and data interoperability.
• Support the evolution of platform capabilities across identity/auth, role-based access, configuration, and tenancy models.
• Align delivery with DevOps/CI-CD practices, feature flags, rollout strategies, and secure-by-default principles.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Communicate product vision and progress clearly to business partners and senior stakeholders; run demos and gather feedback.
• Where needed, engage directly with customers to lead discovery sessions and validate solutions.
• Ensure all deliverables align with brand and UX guidelines, and maintain consistent standards across products.

Key Outcomes (First 6-12 Months)

• A clear, outcomes-led product roadmap for core applications and platform capabilities.
• Consistently shippable increments with traceable value (eg, reduced cycle time, improved NPS/CSAT, lower support tickets).
• Improved requirements quality, with fewer rework cycles and stronger alignment between UX, engineering, and QA.
• Robust acceptance testing and automation coverage for new features; measurable uptick in release confidence.
• Well-defined API and data contracts that simplify integrations and reduce friction for downstream systems.

Required Skills & Experience (Software-Focused)

• Experience as a Product Owner (or similar: Product Analyst, Product Designer) within Agile software development teams.
• Demonstrable ability to design high-quality user journeys, with strong UX instincts and practical wireframing skills.
• Proven strength in requirements analysis and solution design, including acceptance criteria and edge-case handling.
• Experience with process mapping and optimisation; able to simplify complex workflows into intuitive product experiences.
• Confidence working across API design, data models, and integration patterns (eg, EDI, REST, event-driven).
• Excellent communication skills; able to align distributed teams and present to senior stakeholders.
• Hands-on collaboration with QA on BDD, acceptance tests, and release readiness.
• Self-directed, detail-oriented, and outcomes-driven.

Desirable Skills & Tools

• Exposure to software architectures: microservices, event-driven systems, multi-tenancy, and secure authentication/authorisation.
• Familiarity with modern stacks (examples only; not mandatory):
• Frontend: React, Angular, Vue; design systems and component libraries
• Mobile: React Native, Flutter, native iOS/Android
• Backend: Node.js,.NET, Java (Spring), Python
• APIs & Messaging: REST/GraphQL, gRPC, Kafka/RabbitMQ
• Data: SQL/NoSQL, data modelling, analytics/observability
• DevOps: CI/CD pipelines, containers (Docker/K8s), IaC (Terraform), feature flags
• Testing: BDD (Cucumber/SpecFlow), contract testing (Pact), automation frameworks
• Experience with WMS/FSL concepts is helpful, but the emphasis is on software product delivery.
• Experience working remotely with cross-functional teams and driving alignment across time zones.

To find out more about Computer Futures please visit www.computerfutures.com

Computer Futures, a trading division of SThree Partnership LLP is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy | Registered office | 8 Bishopsgate, London, EC2N 4BQ, United Kingdom | Partnership Number | OC387148 England and Wales