Product Manager

Location: National*

Closing Date: 18th May

Interviews: w/c 2nd June 2025

Grade: 7

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)

Salary: London: £61,201 - £69,338

National: £56,532 - £64,048

Working pattern: Full-time/Part-time/Flexible working

Contract Type: Permanent

Vacancy number: 5631

*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found ON THIS MAP

The Role

We’re recruiting for a Product Manager here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Legal Aid Agency (LAA) and Probation Digital teams.

This role aligns against Product Manager from the Government Digital and Data Framework

Millions of people every year interact with MoJ services, and here at Justice Digital we play an important role in making the experience of all of our users simpler, faster, and better.

We have a clear vision - to deliver a world class justice system that works for all - and we’re looking for talented people to help us achieve it. Our MoJ strategy sets out our core priorities, this includes putting data at the core of our decisions and users at the heart of our services.

We are ambitious, and we need great product people to help us achieve the ambitions we have set out in our 2025 vision, delivering great outcomes through digital products. We’re looking for talented, enthusiastic and passionate individuals who are excited by the challenge of designing digital public services and providing our staff with technology at least as good as they have at home.

We need Product Managers to be a part of our highly collaborative and creative teams here at Justice Digital. There are various opportunities across a range of teams that are already delivering and developing great products and services across a diverse portfolio of work. There are opportunities in the following areas:

In Probation Digital we are working to create a world class digital-first probation service that drives down reoffending. We are working hard to solve challenges at the heart of our justice system with a probation service that is under increasing pressure. Our aim is to deliver simpler, better, faster digital services to help frontline staff and people on probation, and we’re looking for someone who can help shape our strategy by advocating the user perspective. Watch here to learn more about the exciting agenda for Probation Digital.

In the Legal Aid Agency we help the most vulnerable people in society to get access to legal representation. LAA digital works to improve access to legal representation and enable reliable and swift payments to providers of legal aid. We aim to support the future of legal aid with sustainable, user-centred services such as Check if you can get legal aid.

Your goal is to contribute to solving complex and often challenging problems. It’s a really exciting and challenging time right now, you can make a considerable difference, help us to achieve great outcomes and to be a part of our vibrant product community.

As well as doing great work, we’re creating a place that’s great to work in. We offer brilliant training opportunities, access to great professional networks and support from expert colleagues. On top of that, you’ll find flexible working, an inclusive culture and a place where your opinion is valued.

To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025

Key Responsibilities:

• Product Managers are at the core of defining, owning and solving problems, they are responsible for creating the value narrative for their own digital product. There are a range of products here at Justice Digital that exist within a diverse product portfolio, all linked to delivering critical services across Justice services.
• You will develop the overall vision for your product and engage teams and stakeholders in the development of that vision over time. You will champion the delivery and continuous improvement of your product, using your knowledge of user needs and business goals to frame problems, set priorities and inform delivery teams you will work with, of the continuous improvement.
• Product Managers are growing their expert skills at this stage in their career pathway, whilst continually developing knowledge and practice of product management techniques as part of their evolving toolkit. Here at MoJ, we continually invest in supporting you to professionally develop.
• Product Managers are a key role to provide direction and empower people in their multi-disciplinary teams, working in agile cultures and environments. They may manage associate product managers and support their professional development as well as growing their own. They will also work with Senior Product managers to enable the delivery of outcomes across multiple teams.

You will be at the core of our thriving Product community here, helping it to continually grow and succeed, playing an integral role in demonstrating your professional capability to enable others.

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!

Benefits

• 37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.
• A £1k per person learning budget is in place to support all our people, with access to best in class conferences and seminars, accreditation with professional bodies, fully funded vocational programmes and e-learning platforms
• Staff have 10% time to dedicate to develop & grow
• Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 28.97% from April 1st 2024 (Contribution Rates)
• 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ birthday. 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.
• Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
• Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.
• Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
• Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care vouchers.
• 5 days volunteering paid leave.
• Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
• Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.

Person Specification

Essential

• Product ownership - the core skills of product management, capturing user needs to inform decision-making and prioritisation, and translate them into outcomes.
• User Focus - User-centred design is at the heart of our work. You’ll be working to at least ‘practitioner’ level in this area: able to collaborate with user researchers and can sell or represent users internally; understand the difference between user needs and desires of the user; able to champion user research to focus on totality of all users.
• Strategic ownership - Building relationships is key, having strong stakeholder management skills, ideally developed in multi-disciplined environments will help effectively get buy-in from the organisation. You can work with scant information and explain it in abstract terms and develop a strategy, vision and create roadmaps to support the success of your product.
• Setting goals for a team (often through tools such as the backlog and user stories). You’ll be working to at least ‘practitioner’ level developing expert skills and capable of working with a range of specialists in a multidisciplinary team and applying the tools, terms, and concepts in a variety of ways to suit the problem you are solving. Having the ability to prioritise and define approaches, guiding others in doing so to help realise the continuous value of your product.
• Lifecycle perspective - Understanding of the different phases of the product lifecycle and the impact this has on product strategy. You’ll be at least ‘working level’ in this skill, have expertise in moving a product or service from one stage of the product lifecycle to another.
• Working within constraints. You can understand and work within given constraints (such as technology, policy, regulatory, financial and legal constraints). You can challenge constraints that can be changed. You can ensure compliance with constraints by adapting products and services where needed.

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for BPSS clearance

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.

How to Apply

Candidates must submit a CV and Cover Letter (500 words max), which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.

In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Making effective decisions
• Managing a quality service
• Working together

A diverse panel will review your application against the Person Specification above.

Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1-hour panel interview held via video conference.

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on “Product ownership” and “User Focus” will be conducted before the sift. The panel will be conducting a sift on the following criteria from the Person Specification above:

• Strategic Ownership
• Working Within Constraints

Candidates who do not demonstrate examples/details of their experience of the requirements stated under the Person Specification above in their Cover Letter will be rejected on this basis.

Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.

A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.

Terms & Conditions

Please review our Terms & Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.uk