Senior Product Manager (Technical)

Job summary

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.

Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

1. joining up public sector services
2. harnessing the power of AI for the public good
3. strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
4. elevating leadership and investing in talent
5. funding for outcomes and procuring or growth and innovation
6. committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.

We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.

Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.

Job description

We're looking for an experienced product manager to join GOV.UK's Platform Engineering team as our Senior Technical Product Manager.

The GOV.UK platform is what lets our service teams commit code and see it running in production shortly after, without thinking about the compute, networking, deployment or monitoring underneath. It runs on Kubernetes in AWS and serves multiple applications. The team is small, experienced and technical: software engineers, site reliability engineers, technical architecture and cyber security specialists.

Your job is to run the platform as a product and develop a product strategy that harnesses the engineering expertise in the team.

The successful candidate will be able to gather and analyse user needs from a range of technical users, make informed choices about priorities, and demonstrate to senior stakeholders the value of what gets done. You’ll own the platform’s roadmap, its product metrics and its evidence base, and will work with the Lead Product Manager to present the platform’s progress and needs at senior level.

This is a role for someone who enjoys working alongside technologists as part of a multi-disciplinary team. You’ll be the only product person embedded in the team, with the independence and the responsibility that brings.

As a Senior Product Manager (Technical), you’ll:

• foster a platform-as-product approach and culture, developing an expert understanding of the platform’s users, their needs and their behaviours
• define, explain and iterate an evidence-based product vision that's compelling to your team, users and stakeholders
• maintain a roadmap and product strategy that show your strategic plans at different horizons and granularities
• define, measure and report a small set of platform product metrics, and use them to demonstrate the platform’s value to senior stakeholders
• work with the Lead Product Manager to present the platform’s progress, needs and trade-offs at senior level.
• set clear, measurable, outcome-oriented goals with the team, balancing developer-facing benefits with reliability, security, and other service-level considerations.
• collaborate with team members on prototypes and other low-cost ways to test assumptions and safely use test-and-learn approaches where appropriate.
• engage users and stakeholders through a range of channels to encourage take-up and use of the platform’s paved paths.
• work with delivery colleagues to minimise work in progress and encourage rapid learning.
• play an active role in the government product manager community, sharing your learning and celebrating progress made by other people and teams.
• line manage 1-2 Product Managers, supporting their growth and development

Person specification

You'll be keen to work on internal, technical platforms and to apply your product management skills to a platform-as-product approach. Prior experience of Product Management in a Platform context is desirable but not essential. What is essential is that you’ve product-managed something with technical users, where the product had to prove its value to survive.

We’re interested in people who have:

• experience product-managing internal or technical products: developer tooling, platforms, APIs or infrastructure services
• a track record of defining, measuring and reporting performance objectives for a product, ideally where no measurement existed before
• effective verbal, written and visual communication, tailored to the audience, especially presenting technical subject matter to senior non-technical leadership
• experience using data, research and insight to spot problems, prioritise and evaluate success
• proficiency in agile product management: roadmaps, prioritisation, user stories, MVP definition, planning at different horizons
• enough technical fluency to work credibly with engineers: you understand what containers, infrastructure as code and production operations are for, without needing to operate them
• experience improving technical practices and team culture

Benefits

There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:

• flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
• a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
• 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
• an extra day off for the King’s birthday
• an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
• career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
• a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
• job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
• advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
• death in service benefits
• cycle to work scheme and facilities
• access to an employee discounts scheme
• 10 learning days per year
• volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
• access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning

Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

Office attendance
The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.
DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

The standard selection process for roles at GDS consists of:

• a simple application screening process - We only ask for a CV and cover letter of up to 750 words. Important tip - please ensure that your cover letter includes how you meet the skills and experience listed in the “person specification” section above
• a 75 minute video interview

Depending on how many applications we get, there might also be an extra stage before the video interview, for example a phone interview or a technical exercise.

In the event we receive a high volume of applications, we will conduct the initial sift against the lead criteria which is:

• experience product-managing internal or technical products: developer tooling, platforms, APIs or infrastructure services

In the Civil Service, we use Success Profiles to evaluate your skills and ability. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, increases performance and improves diversity and inclusivity. We’ll be assessing your technical abilities, skills, experience and behaviours that are relevant to this role.

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours:

• working together
• changing and improving
• making effective decisions
• leadership
• developing self and others
• seeing the bigger picture
• communicating and influencing

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours:

We’ll also be assessing your experience and specialist technical skills against the following skills defined in the Government Digital and Data Capability Framework for the Senior Product Manager role:

• agile and lean practices
• applying user-centred insights
• creating value for money
• life cycle management
• managing product outcomes
• product leadership
• product management
• stakeholder relationship management
• strategic ownership

Want to know more about who Government Digital and Data are? Click Here

Recruitment Timeline

Sift completion: 1st October 2026

Panel interviews: w/c 12th October 2026

Candidates that do not pass the interview but have demonstrated an acceptable standard may be considered for similar roles at a lower grade.

A reserve list will be held for a period of 12 months, from which further appointments can be made.

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.

Sponsorship

DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

Security:

Successful candidates must pass a disclosure and barring security check.

Please note that this role requires SC clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years. This is not an absolute requirement, but supplementary checks may be needed where individuals have not lived in the UK for that period. This may mean your security clearance (and therefore your appointment) will take longer or, in some cases, not be possible.

For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency may range from 3 to 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk
• Email : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should contact gds-complaints@dsit.gov.uk in the first instance.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive you can contact the Civil Service Commission by email: info@csc.gov.uk Or in writing: Civil Service Commission, Room G/8 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ.