Product Manager - Government

Faculty is one of Europe’s leading applied artificial intelligence companies. We build, deploy and operate AI solutions to increase our customers’ performance and help them realise their full potential. We believe that AI should be trustworthy, impactful and beneficial across society. Those principles have shaped our work with more than 230 organisations across the public and private sectors as we help them use AI to understand more deeply, make better decisions and act faster.

Within the Government Practice our mission is to constantly improve the delivery of public services through the development of cutting-edge AI products which get used at scale by government organisations in the UK and beyond. We are fortunate enough to get to work on some of the most socially impactful and important applications of AI across Government: our work includes building products to help the police identify child abuse, to tackle the profileration of terrorist propaganda online, to tackle the proliferation of disinformation and to automatically sort and segregate nuclear waste, among many other applications.

And, excitingly, as Government has grown in its maturity for using AI, increasingly our job is to ensure that the AI we build gets deployed in products which are used at scale and as a critical part of public service delivery. That requires pushing the boundaries of ensuring that excellent user engagement, design skills, and robust product management is applied to how AI systems get built and deployed to users.

What you'll be doing

As a Product Manager you will lead and enable cross-functional teams in developing cutting-edge, safe and robustly deployable AI technology in critical government contexts.

You will be working with a very wide range of stakeholders to make sense of myriad complex needs and requirements. Your art will be to convert these into a compelling vision and a constantly evolving roadmap of prioritised problems to solve. You will lead, motivate and collaborate closely with your team to enable them to discover the most effective solutions and deliver them effectively. Teams tackling these challenges are typically made up of a product manager, a product designer, engineers, data scientists, and commercial experts.

Your role will evolve alongside business needs as well as your personal aspirations; but you can expect your key responsibilities to include:

• Working on long-running projects to build business critical systems:
• Lead in developing a product strategy and vision, working closely with the Client Manager and client stakeholders.
• Engage and motivate the delivery/technical team to achieve the vision and work with the Client Manager to do the same with the client.
• Be the go to person about the product. Ensure that the team has an in-depth and accurate understanding of all requirements, from the client’s strategic objectives, to users and their needs, to technical and feasibility requirements. Oversee, support and get hands on as needed to achieve this goal.
• Proactively test/trial in a smart way: Identify assumptions and risks to success; Drive the creative process of establishing an appropriate minimum viable product in collaboration with the team.
• Build and own a well-prioritised product roadmap.
• Provide the right level of detail to enable the team to implement an effective solution: write briefs for discovery and delivery items, objectives and success criteria for experiments, user stories, scope of features etc.
• Continually work to refine the product scope and priorities, in partnership with the Client Manager, client stakeholders and the technical team in order to deliver value early and often. Ensure that technical requirements are adequately reflected.
• Be responsible for the overall product development process and proactively improve it. Be accountable for the quality and the timeliness of the continuous delivery of a gradually maturing product.
• Work with the technical lead and the client manager to ensure buy-in. Support the team in working effectively together, ensuring that the work of each craft creates a coherent whole.
• Conduct market and domain research relevant to your product area to ensure that our solution is leading and to advise clients on build vs. build.
• Creating long term value through:
• Contribute to an empowered culture in the team and to team leadership by proactively surfacing issues and coming up with ideas to resolve them.
• Contribute to a culture that champions user-driven approach and fosters the relevant skills among delivery and technical teams
• Spot opportunities for AI solutions to become enduring software products that can be sold elsewhere
• Contribute to the business unit’s product strategy, informing our view on where there are opportunities and what projects we should seek to pursue.

Who we are looking for

• A creative, empathetic team player who can inspire and motivate others
• A can-do and proactive person who can operate in ambiguity
• A great communicator with proven ability to engage with engineers, designers, data scientists, commercial leads and clients in a constructive and collaborative way.
• Experience within a similar Product Manager role.
• A demonstrable interest in and affinity for data-rich products. Relevant experience, particularly in a B2B context will be a plus.
• Experience of thriving in a fast-paced work environment. Relevant experience working within a start-up/scale up will be a plus.
• Demonstrable understanding of the techniques and methods of modern product discovery and product delivery.
• Demonstrable ability to figure out solutions to hard problems with many constraints, using sound judgement to assess risks, and to lay out your argument in a well-structured, data-informed way.

What we can offer you

You’ll join a diverse and distinctive team. We all come from different personal, professional and organisational backgrounds. We all have one thing in common: we are driven by a deep intellectual curiosity that powers us forward each day. This curiosity pushes us to seek truth and understanding in everything we do, to execute work in a nimble and pragmatic manner, to foster talent in one another and always to challenge assumptions.

Faculty is the professional challenge of a lifetime. You’ll be surrounded by an impressive group of brilliant minds working to advance our goal of making artificial intelligence real. Our consultants, product developers, business development specialists, operations professionals and more all bring something unique to Faculty, and you’ll learn something new from everyone you meet. You’ll also have the opportunity to make your mark on a high-growth start-up now poised to expand internationally.

Fostering talent is one of our core values, it’s built into our culture and what we offer. An incredible, unique learning and development system: Faculty was founded by people who are passionate about continuous learning, and adding value to our people. Genuinely flexible working: We believe people have needs, responsibilities and interests that require something different to a strict working day. We trust people to organise and take accountability for their own work and do our best to support their lives outside Faculty. Equity, we want you to benefit from Faculty’s growth and success. Unlimited holidays: We encourage each other to use this time to take a break, work on personal projects, or to spend time with their friends and family. Fantastic private health, optical and dental cover, including 24/7 unlimited virtual private GP appointments. Breakfast and more fruit, drinks and snacks than you could ever eat (for office-based employees). Did we mention Yoga? You’ll make friends and professional connections that will last a lifetime. We work hard and make sure we enjoy what we do. So we have frequent socials and informal get-togethers to help make sure you enjoy your time with us.