Principal Product Manager

About The Role
Hippo Digital is recruiting Principal Product Managers to join our friendly consultancy. Product Managers ensure that our client's goals turn into actions. This means creating a compelling vision for your product, developing the product roadmap, writing user stories and actively managing them in a prioritised backlog.
As a Principal Consultant, specialising in Product, you’ll already be an expert in your field and a manager of other Product Managers. You’ll also be a confident leader of programs of delivery with multi-disciplinary teams and an expert in user-centred design approaches. Hippo will provide exciting opportunities to coach, lead and influence clients and other Hippos, and further develop your skills as a leader.
Your role in a nutshell:
- Inspiring and guiding your colleagues across a portfolio of products and services to understand and deliver a program vision, providing clear objectives and a clear roadmap
- Leading programs and organisations to put in place objectives and measures of success which drive the right behaviours for the delivery of a long-term vision
- Be an advocate in Agile delivery, helping to identify the best Agile processes for your projects.
- Advocate for user-centred product development and lifecycle in the delivery of products or services.
- Engage and inform stakeholders and have the credibility and humility to communicate with an extremely diverse group of people
- Provide product leadership for multidisciplinary program teams and coaching for less experienced members of your project team and your client
- Lead on innovation in processes and approaches to ensure operational excellence
- Define the recruitment and training processes for Product Managers, advise on the suitability of candidates and lead recruitment interviews.
- Work closely with the Head of Product to provide leadership and direction within the Hippo Product Community of Practice.
About the Candidate:
People are at the centre of everything we do. We’re a diverse and close-knit community united by a love for solving complex problems for our clients and their users. We take a common sense approach to getting things done. We get things wrong, we learn from experience and we adapt. We stay curious and never stop learning.
We don’t need you to have any certificates or qualifications, but we do need to be confident that you have the ability to:
- Lead and influence large groups of people who are specialists in their fields
- Identify and measure the value of work delivered, linking it back to vision, goals and user needs
- Work across several teams of people, balancing dependencies and priorities of all teams and communicating a cohesive roadmap.
- Build consensus amongst people with different perspectives, with the confidence to make decisive decisions when consensus is not possible
- Bridge the gap between stakeholders and the team so the team can remain focused on the delivery
- Find pragmatic and creative ways to overcome obstacles
- Ensure the user is at the heart of the product and the team
- Perform well in a wide variety of disciplines (Scrum, Kanban, DevOps)
- Deliver products that meet user needs whilst balancing political, economic, social and technological factors and working effectively and collaboratively with policymakers
- Communicate confidently and credibly on behalf of the Hippo
- Lead workshops and group exercises, remotely and in-person
- Build capability in others, helping colleagues and clients know what to do when you are not around
- Provide expertise in the design and redesign of operational processes at any stage of the product lifecycle and guide others in the implementation of recommendations
About The Company
As well as a competitive salary which we’re transparent about from the outset, you can also expect a range of benefits:
- Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%)
- 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays
- Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
- Critical illness cover
- Life assurance and death in service cover
- Volunteer days
- Cycle-to-work scheme for the avid cyclists
- Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
- Season ticket loans
- Financial and general wellbeing sessions
- Flexible benefits scheme with options of:
- private health cover
- private dental cover
- additional company pension contributions
- additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days)
- wellbeing contribution
- charity contributions
- tree planting
Hi, we’re Hippo Digital.
At Hippo Digital, we design with empathy and build for impact. We do this by combining data-informed evidence, human-centred design and software engineering. We're a digital services partner who is genuinely invested in helping our clients thrive as modern organisations. Our delivery methodology is truly agile, from concept to reality, supporting innovation and continuous improvement to achieve your desired outcomes.
We firmly believe that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. We take a human-centred approach to everything we do because we understand that complex problems require a service design approach. This means understanding how users behave and ensuring our solutions work for them in the real world.
Our combination of data, design, and engineering delivers bespoke digital services that make a positive and meaningful impact on organisations and society. We're confident in our abilities, authentic in our approach, and passionate about what we do. If you're looking for a digital services partner that can deliver real results, let us help you build for the future and make a lasting impact.
Hippo locations
We are headquartered in Leeds and located across the UK in Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol. We're on the lookout for top talent nationwide, so don't let location hold you back from applying. We welcome candidates from all over the UK who possess the flexibility to work from any of our locations. Plus, we offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8k to help make your move a smooth one. It's worth noting that, given the dynamic nature of our business, you may be required to work on-site at client locations or from your own home.
Diversity and Inclusion at Hippo Digital: A commitment to lasting change
At Hippo Digital, we're wholeheartedly dedicated to promoting diversity, equality and inclusion. For us, it's not about checking off boxes but about making a true, lasting difference. Having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity and problem-solving while fostering an inclusive environment that benefits everyone. We strongly encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply and join us on this important journey.