Product Manager - Platform Technology
Employment Type: Contract Inside IR35
Duration: 10 Months
Umbrella Rate: £550/day
Location: Exeter (Hybrid, 3 days onsite per week)
Clearance Level: Eligible for SC
Opportunity Overview
We are working with a leading UK organisation to find an experienced Product Manager for a key role within their Platform Technology function. Our client is undergoing a significant technology modernisation programme and needs a skilled product professional to help shape and improve the internal platforms their developers, scientists and service teams depend on every day.
This is a rare opportunity to practise real product management in a complex, data-intensive environment - working at the heart of a mission-driven organisation where the work genuinely matters.
About the Role
The Platform Technology team is responsible for shared, cross-cutting capabilities including developer tools, APIs, data pipelines and infrastructure services. The incoming Product Manager will be responsible for making these platforms reliable, discoverable and enabling - reducing delivery friction, improving user experience, and helping downstream teams ship faster and more safely.
Job Function
- Support the development of a business case to invest in service enhancements and engagements with third-party suppliers.
- Own the roadmap and backlog for one or more shared technology platforms and deliver to the agreed product vision.
- Work with engineers, architects and delivery teams to deliver incremental improvements that make platforms easier to use and maintain.
- Understand internal users, from developers to operations staff, and translate their needs into clear priorities.
- Investigate and develop measurable service outcomes (adoption, usability, performance) and use data to track progress.
- Balance short-term reliability with long-term sustainability and compliance.
- Facilitate collaboration across technical and non-technical stakeholders; communicate trade-offs transparently.
- Champion product-led, user-informed, iterative ways of working in a complex, legacy/brownfield environment.
Requirements
- Proven experience managing developer infrastructure products and associated cloud technologies (e.g. AWS, Azure, shared services).
- Experience successfully managing commercial and bought-in services.
- Ability to apply and adapt Agile and Lean practices in an engineering-focused team.
- Strong understanding of user-centred product development - even when the 'users' are other engineers.
- Skilled at prioritising by outcome using approaches such as impact vs. effort or cost-of-delay.
- Confident working with cross-disciplinary teams and senior technical stakeholders.
- Comfortable operating in environments with legacy systems, competing priorities and incomplete information.
- Excellent communicator - able to translate complex technical issues into clear decisions and trade-offs.
Why This Role?
Our client operates at significant scale, managing vast volumes of data in support of critical national and scientific services. The technology estate is complex and established - this isn't a greenfield startup - but that's exactly what makes it interesting. You'll be joining at a moment of genuine appetite for change, working alongside engineers and scientists who are deeply invested in what they build.
If you're looking for a role where platform product management actually means something, this is it.
