Product Owner

Overview

Role: Product Owner (Air Quality)

Location: UK Flexible

Role ID: 2023-1742

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Energy & Environment, one of Ricardo plc’s five operating business units, is a leader in sustainability consultancy, solving complex environmental challenges through industry-leading analysis, advice and data. With more than 40 years of heritage in addressing air quality, environmental and sustainability issues, our customers value us for our deep understanding and breadth of services covering the entire value chain from evidence, policy & strategy to implementation.

We are currently looking for a Product Owner (Air Quality) - Digital Services to join our Digital Services, Product Management team.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and implement a product vision to provide clarity of the future direction for the development team, senior leadership, customers, and the wider business. It will be the responsibility of the Product Owner to define and communicate the vision, on an ongoing basis, to relevant stakeholders.
• Take full control of the product backlog and providing insight to relevant stakeholder on the prioritisation. Support the development team to ensure focus remains on areas of development with the maximum customer value.
• Take an active role in all relevant development ceremonies and associated business processes, this may include sprint planning, functionality refinement, development reviews.
• Manage reporting of product performance by tracking key performance indicators including revenue, sales pipeline, cost savings, market share, customer feedback and other relevant indicators.
• Work with the sales and marketing experts to develop and implement go-to-market strategies.
• Develop and implement a plan for engaging customers and gathering relevant research and metrics throughout the product lifecycle.
• Assess competing products and substitutes by comparing the product to others available on the market.
• Develop business cases and financial modelling to support additional internal needs.
• Evaluate and implement relevant distribution channels on a regular basis – reviewing different commercial arrangements to maximise sales opportunities. Where channel sales are implemented, the Product Owner support the partners involved.
• Determine product pricing and sales models through market research data; reviewing development and sales costs; anticipating volume; costing special and customised orders and reviewing sales pipeline performance.
• Maintain professional and technical knowledge by attending educational workshops; reviewing professional publications; establishing personal networks; participating in professional associations and groups.

Beyond the product managed in this role, the Product Owner will also support the business (alongside other team members) in reviewing prospective products in the initial stages, helping to test the validity and suitability of the commercial delivery of the product.

Due to the size and scale of the Ricardo Energy and Environment organisation, there will be opportunities for this role to become engaged in a wide variety of topics and products. Willingness to be adaptable and flexible in approach and apply this approach to varied topics will be key skill for this role.

Key competencies and experience

• Customer focused – you enjoy directly engaging with current and prospective customers and like to understand their needs and what they value. You can distill complex work and requirements into simple terms that clearly express the value a feature will deliver to a customer and our business.
• Strong commercial awareness – you are motivated by targets based on customer adoption and revenue. You understand the commercial levers you can use that deliver the most positive performance impact.
• Hands-on – you actively enjoy being involved in the delivery of the product vision and have the positive mindset to take action to enable it to be realized.
• Development savvy – you are experienced and enjoy working in an agile environment with data experts and software developers, working closely with key team members to get the best outcomes.
• Excellent communication and engagement skills – you are comfortable engaging with internal and external stakeholders (irrespective of level of the organisation) and understand the importance of providing stakeholders with visibility of the product activities and outcomes being delivered.
• An understanding of Air Quality modelling, measurements and tooling will be advantageous, although not essential.

Skills and behaviours

• Product Vision creation and stakeholder communication
• Backlog creation, prioritisation and roadmap creation and alignment
• Epic and story definition
• Agile development (e.g. Scrum, Kanban etc)
• Customer and Market analysis
• Go to market strategy definition
• Ability to adapt approaches and methods to a varied set of topics
• Communication to varied sets of stakeholders (from executive to developers)

Desirable

• Experience in Air Quality modelling, monitoring, and tooling
• Business Analysis and requirements elicitation and clarification
• Pricing strategies
• Innovation management and design thinking / design strategy

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that's working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and ensure a culture of inclusivity, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Benefits

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.