Product Development Lead

Fixed term contract for 1 year (with the possibility of extension)

The job of a Save the Children’s UK Product Development Lead is creative and varied

• Are you a strategic thinker with previous digital project or product management experience?
• Do you have experience working with multidisciplinary teams to scope, prototype and launch successful, innovative new products into the market?
• Do you have strong analytical and technical skills in data collection and analysis (both qual and quant), particularly in monitoring product success metrics and iterating/improving features in response to insights.
• Are you motivated by our vision of creating a world where every child doesn’t just survive, but thrives, and can go on to change the world?

If the answers to these questions are yes, we would love to hear from you!

About Us

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA) as part of SCUK’s humanitarian department provides high-quality humanitarian capacity strengthening for the movement, as well as the wider sector, as part of our shifting the power agenda.

The HLA’s mission, as a team within the humanitarian department, is to enable people around the world to prepare for and respond to crises in their own countries, by providing quality learning opportunities. The HLA’s approach spans from focused needs-based learning in countries hit by crises to the huge international reach of our learning platform, Kaya. They are a global team that has a full suite of in-house skills to provide and develop the offer; technical and learning experts, platform specialists, a digital and design studio, communications support and more.

The HLA enables SCUK to offer the most effective and impactful humanitarian capacity strengthening resource for both the Save the Children movement, the wider humanitarian sector and beyond.

Job Purpose

The HLA’s platforms have been established and as of 2022 reach over 500k individual learners, with over 50 partners utilising an existing product. Individual learners benefit from hundreds of free, online and blended courses, while the existing products provide a low-cost but highly flexible and adaptable learning management system (LMS) to partner organisations. The next step in this journey will be for this new function to further scale the platforms and products, as well as launch new, commercially viable platform products for existing and expanded audiences.

The HLA’s Platforms & Products function are responsible for developing, managing and supporting the HLA’s flagship digital platforms, Kaya and HPass, and the portfolio of paid-for products that they enable. It consists of a team of technical specialists whose responsibilities span UX/UI development, feature delivery, the set-up and maintenance of the platform

infrastructure and hosting arrangements, and individual user support; as well as end-to-end management of the platform products throughout their lifecycle, from ideation, through build and launch, to growth and ongoing technical support to the partners that utilise them in fulfilment of Service Level Agreements (SLA).

The Product Development Lead will be key to achieving this. The purpose of the role will be to lead on the scoping, testing and launching of new products that will help to realise the HLA-Enterprises’ ambitious growth plans and ultimately the HLA’s charitable mission. You will be empowered to own your product roadmaps and backlogs; establishing minimum viable products that are iteratively developed based on continuous feedback, and which are ultimately taken to scale and established within the HLA-E’s product portfolio.

Key Accountabilities:

The Product Development Lead’s key duties will include:

• Work closely with the Head of Platforms and Products to develop new platform products in-line with the HLA-E strategy.
• Responsible for product ideation; scope/research initial ideas and generate hypotheses, in collaboration with users and partners using a range of discovery techniques.
• Finalise initial product ideas/plans, wireframe and work with the development team to build prototypes/MVPs.
• Own the product roadmaps and translate into manageable, prioritised backlogs.
• Oversee the work of the development team in the build of prototypes and ongoing feature delivery, leading designers, front/backend developers and QA testers using an agile method.
• Optimise analytic solutions and establish/monitor product success metrics and feedback loops; utilising data/insights in the iterative development of new products.
• Consult with and provide information/technical specifications to Marketing for product launch and promotion.
• Work closely with the Platforms & Products Lead to coordinate the development, integration and testing of new products on the core platforms, and to establish the necessary ongoing maintenance required.
• Connect to the sector and stay aware of external opportunities, partnerships and technological developments of relevance to the HLA’s work, including ongoing competitor, market and SWOT analysis at every stage of the product cycle

Person Profile

As the Product Development Lead you will have experience working with multidisciplinary teams to scope, prototype and launch successful, innovative new products into the market.

You will be familiar with product-led growth, particularly in a start-up environment and preferably relating to platform marketplaces and/or B2B SaaS learning products. You will be highly analytical in your thinking, using data and insights to inform decisions, but also comfortable dealing with ambiguity.

You will be keen to actively listen to, empathise with and ultimately develop a deep understanding of the HLA’s users and partners, and will play a central role in developing technical solutions to meet these stakeholders’ needs, while balanced against the business needs of the HLA.

Experience

• A strategic thinker with previous digital project or product management experience.

• Research experience, including performing competitor and market analysis for new products.

• Experience developing or contributing to go-to-market strategies.

• Experience in using discovery methods and design thinking to develop and launch new, commercially viable products, ideally within a platform/marketplace environment

• Strong analytical and technical skills in data collection and analysis (both qual and quant), particularly in monitoring product success metrics and iterating/improving features in response to insights.

• Very strong creative problem-solving skills.

Abilities

• Strong digital literacy skills and the ability to quickly adopt new technologies and approaches.
• Ability to build effective trust-based relationships and networks, with strong partnership development and management skills.
• Ability to contribute to a high performing team and work effectively across different functions to ensure maximum effectiveness and impact.
• Strong representational and communication skills; able to articulate a vision, strategy, or idea clearly and concisely and to work with multiple, cross-sector stakeholders.

Aptitude

• Passion and energy to work in pursuit of transforming humanitarian response globally.
• A demonstrable commitment to the principles of diversity and inclusion and their practical application and integration in the work environment
• A commitment to Save the Children UK’s aims and core values of accountability, ambition, collaboration, creativity, and integrity

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

Save the Children UK is committed to diversity and equality of opportunity in all aspects of our work both external and internal. We strive to be an inclusive employer and particularly encourage applications from under-represented groups such as returning parents or carers who are re-entering work after a career break, people who are LGBT+, from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, with a disability, impairment, learning difference or long-term condition, with caring responsibilities, from different nations and regions, and from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.