We’re First Central Insurance & Technology Group (First Central for short), an innovative, market-leading insurance company. We protect the things customers love so they can get on with what matters to them in life.
Data drives us. It fuels our outstanding distribution, finance, technology and legal services. Our underwriting skills are built on data expertise; it creates the insights we need to give the right cover to the right customers at the right price. But, it’s the people inside and outside our business that power us. They make us stand out, help us succeed. We’re ambitious. We’re growing. We’ve won awards.
Ready to lead and make a real impact? As our Technical Product Owner for Customer, you’ll be the driving force behind our customer-focused products, ensuring they deliver maximum value, stay compliant, and keep evolving. You’ll own the product vision and roadmap, making sure it aligns with our big-picture customer strategy and wider business goals. Working closely with Heads of Strategy and Change, key stakeholders, and external partners, you'll transform insights into a dynamic product backlog that gets results.
You’ll be the bridge between tech teams and the business, bringing people together, prioritising what matters, and steering the product towards value-driven outcomes. Your deep product expertise will shine as you tackle needs, uncover business value, and work across the enterprise to deliver impactful results. Plus, you’ll lead a talented, cross-functional delivery team that’s empowered to build a high-quality, high-performing product - If you’re excited to shape the future and deliver real value, this is the role for you!
We’re all about flexible working! Whether you want to be home-based, office-based, or go for a hybrid setup—it’s entirely your choice. If you prefer being in the office more often, that’s great with us too! We have offices in Haywards Heath (West Sussex) and Salford Quays (Manchester), so you can choose what works best for you.
Key skills you'll bring for success in this role:
- Considerable experience in software delivery and working with delivery teams in a product-aligned model – key to driving product success and working closely with the delivery teams.
- Excellent stakeholder management skills, adept at handling conflicting requirements and unifying diverse perspectives to drive progress – requires strong collaboration across business functions and the ability to navigate different priorities.
- Proven experience in managing enterprise-wide change within high-paced environments – emphasises the ability to navigate complex, agile environments and prioritise for maximum impact.
What's involved:
- Accountable for maximizing the ROI of the technical products and balancing competing demands, ensuring the right levels of technical debt are managed whilst ensuring product stability, resilience, security, scalability and performance are as per agreed service levels
- Define and communicate the product vision, strategy and roadmap in collaboration with Heads of Strategy and Change, business and change stakeholders and product delivery teams
- Conduct market research to analyse industry trends and identify opportunities for product enhancements and innovation in alignment with business plans and objectives
- Responsible for aligning product goals with the wider business outcomes supported by Heads of Strategy and Change and Solution Architecture
- Create and maintain the product backlog ensuring it is well defined, organised and properly prioritised in line with the agile Change Delivery Framework
- Record, document, and report business information and analysis with meticulous accuracy, ensuring data is validated and communicated clearly to stakeholders for informed decision making
- Act as the SME for your product, responsible for making product decisions
- Breakdown Epics, with support from Architecture and your product delivery team into features with appropriate acceptance criteria
- Support your product delivery team in breaking features into user stories and development tasks for effective execution
- Work closely with your product delivery team taking an active role in PI planning, Sprint planning, backlog refinements, sprint stand ups and retros
- Work closely with your Agile Delivery Lead and Release Train Engineers to support delivery activities across the release cycle
- Work with the Test Practice to ensure regression coverage supports the needs of the product and wider business processes, with the responsibility of signing off the product and release prior to live deployment
- Drive your product delivery team to meet product KPIs
- Conduct regular meetings and presentations to update stakeholders on the product’s progress, upcoming features and roadmap changes
- Construct meaningful release content for company wide release notes highlighting changes to the product and useful information about the impact that changes will deliver
- Effectively own and manage product(s) risks, controls and mitigations in line with InfoSec, Governance, Data Protection and compliance related standards, frameworks and processes
- Ensure the Product(s) have a clear set of maintained NFRs
- Maintain robust controls over product level spend, product delivery team efficiency and product value optimisation
Experience, knowledge, skills & qualifications
- Considerable experience in software delivery and working with delivery teams in a product aligned model
- Working knowledge of the product/and or SME knowledge of the capabilities and features associated with the product
- Proven experience in managing enterprise-wide change within high-paced environments and effectively prioritising stakeholder demands
- Strengths in combining rigour and discipline with a pragmatic approach to deliver the highest quality, cost effective features within set timeframes
- Excellent stakeholder management skills, adept at handling conflicting requirements and unifying diverse perspectives to drive progress
- Excellent communication and presentation skills, both verbal and written with the ability to present information in a clear and concise manner to a variety of audiences, both technical and non-technical
- Good understanding of regulatory requirements specific to the Company and the functions under control
- Excellent leadership and motivational skills
- Skilled in cultivating strong, effective relationships across diverse disciplines
- Decisive decision making and proactive approach to problem solving using analytical thinking and emotional intelligence
- Strong interpersonal skills
- Excellent time management and organisation skills
- Agile qualifications such as SAFe Product Owner certification
Behaviours
- Commercially astute and driven by results, demonstrating high levels of self-motivation and enthusiasm
- Organised and has a proactive approach, capable of working independently and collaboratively within a team
- Adaptable and positive, with a strong focus on accuracy and attention to detail.
- Proactively makes informed decisions and actively seeks opportunities for business improvement, contributing to organisational success
- Demonstrates a flexible and adaptable approach to work, proactively adjusting to changing business needs and prioritising tasks to meet business demands effectively
Are your ready to take the next step in your career and make a tangible impact? This is your chance to lead from the front, shape the future of First Centrals customer-focused products, and work in a dynamic, fast-paced environment where your ideas will be valued and your contributions recognised. If you’re passionate about delivering high-quality solutions, collaborating with talented teams, and driving product success, we want to hear from you! Join us, and let’s build something amazing together.
What can we do for you?
People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here.
Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.
