Product Manager - Director

Purpose of the role

Product Managers are responsible for the leading the strategic focus of the product(s), defining the product vision, market strategy, and competitive analysis. They think about the product's future and how it will evolve over time. They work with various teams, including marketing, engineering, operations, and sales, to ensure everyone is aligned on the product strategy.  They use data and market research to inform their decisions and prioritize product features.

Accountabilities

• Define Product Strategy: Accountable for defining a product strategy that aligns with business vision, managing capabilities, balancing short-term with long-term goals, ensuring that products meet market demands and drive growth.
• Cross functional alignment: Leadership of cross functional relationships, working with various cross-functional teams to ensure alignment of product strategy and goals.
• Risk and Control:  Accountable for overseeing product risk management, including identification of potential risks, development of strategies to mitigate those risks, and maintenance of alignment between the product management and control functions.
• Product Development Lifecycle: Own product development lifecycle, from concept to launch, ensuring efficient processes, on-time delivery, and alignment with E2E customer expectations and experience. – working with product owners to drive change objectives.
• Deliver Product Goals and Performance: Deliver clear objectives and key outcomes to steer the product vision and ensure alignment with company’s business goals, financial targets, and strategic vision, driving long-term business success. 
• Data driven decisions: Monitor product performance through data-driven analysis and insights,  regularly assessing progress against objectives and adjusting the strategies as needed to optimise outcomes and maximise value for both business and customer.
• Customer-Centric Focus: Drive a customer -first approach across the product vision, ensuring customer insights, feedback, behaviours, and pain points are at the core of the product strategy and decision-making process. 
• Business and financial acumen: Understanding pricing models, costs structures, and ROI to make financially grounded decisions regarding product development.

Director Expectations

• To manage a business function, providing significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business wide..
• They manage the direction of a large team or sub-function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives.
• Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector / functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments / initiatives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.
• Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.
• Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

All Senior Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

• Own the end-to-end roadmap for client-facing digital products, translating business objectives and client needs into a clear vision, prioritised backlog and measurable outcomes.
• Lead and align engineering, design, research and quality assurance teams throughout the product lifecycle, balancing scope, quality and pace to deliver against agreed timelines.
• Provide product leadership to senior stakeholders, setting expectations and navigating complex organisational dependencies.
• Develop and embed prioritisation frameworks that accelerate time to value.
• Embed data-driven decision-making throughout the product lifecycle.

Required experience — what the candidate needs to bring

• Proven experience taking digital products from concept to launch and scaling them, ideally within a regulated environment.
• Experience partnering with product and service designers and applying human-centred design or design-thinking approaches.
• Strong technology literacy and confidence contributing to and navigating technical discussions.
• Strong analytical, decision-making and stakeholder-management skills.
• Demonstrable experience developing and owning a product strategy.
• Confidence using quantitative and qualitative evidence to make clear trade-off decisions.

Desirable experience

• Demonstrable experience embedding innovative technology solutions.
• Experience building and releasing applications for iOS or Android.