Product Owner

Product Owner

Edinburgh (Hybrid) £60,000 Permanent Mid/Senior

Our client is a GovTech company delivering digital licensing and permitting services on behalf of the Scottish Government. They're looking for a Product Owner to own the day-to-day running of the backlog, keep delivery moving, and ensure the engineering team always has clear, well-defined work in front of them.

The Role

This is an operational product ownership role sitting at the intersection of service design, engineering, and client delivery. You'll sit inside the delivery team, attend standups, run refinement sessions, write stories, resolve blockers, and make the decisions that keep sprints on track. You'll be the person engineering turns to when something is unclear, and the person who ensures what gets built reflects what users and clients actually need. You'll work closely with the CTO to shape and prioritise the backlog, and with engineering to ensure items are well-scoped, understood, and deliverable.

What You'll Do

• Own and maintain the product backlog - groomed, prioritised, and ready for delivery at all times
• Write and refine user stories with clear, testable acceptance criteria
• Run and facilitate backlog refinement, sprint planning, and sprint review sessions
• Work with engineering daily to clarify requirements, unblock delivery, and support sprint execution
• Triage incoming requests from clients and internal teams into well-defined backlog items
• Work with service designers and user researchers to ground delivery in user needs and service evidence
• Distinguish between product configuration choices, service design issues, policy constraints, and engineering decisions
• Manage and communicate sprint progress to the wider team and clients
• Support testing and acceptance of completed work before release
• Flag risks, dependencies, and scope creep early and clearly

What We're Looking For

• Proven experience owning a backlog in an active agile delivery team
• Ability to write clear, well-scoped user stories that engineers can act on without ambiguity
• Strong facilitation skills for refinement, planning, and review ceremonies
• Comfort making day-to-day prioritisation decisions under competing pressures
• Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical colleagues and clients
• An organised, dependable working style - things don't fall through the gaps
• Ability to work across product, service design, engineering, and client teams without losing focus on delivery
• Experience with Scottish Government, local government, UK public services, regulated services, GovTech delivery, or digital licensing and permitting is particularly valuable

The Hiring Process

• Online get-to-know-each-other call - 30 minutes
• Online tech test - 40 min to 1 hour max
• Face-to-face final interview - Edinburgh

What's on Offer

• 30 days holiday, plus your birthday off
• Hybrid working - two days a week at the Leith office (Commercial Quay), three wherever you work best
• Enhanced maternity/paternity leave for primary and secondary carers
• Company pension with employer contributions from day one
• Conference budget, training budget, and equipment allowance
• Regular company meet-ups - strategy days, socials, and the occasional pub quiz
• Impact-led work - the infrastructure you build runs live public services
• Modern, well-maintained codebase (Laravel 12, React 19, TypeScript, PHPStan, Pest 4, Rector)

Please Note:

As this role operates in a regulated environment on behalf of the Scottish Government, candidates must have the right to work in the UK and be willing to complete standard pre-employment background screening (e.g. Baseline Personnel Security Standard or Disclosure Scotland checks, where required).

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