Product Manager - Contract

A Product Manager works with a multi-disciplinary team to create the vision for their product and sets the day-to-day priorities to fulfill that vision. You will lead this vision, balancing a deep understanding of user needs with organizational goals and stakeholder priorities.

This is a leadership role that requires a breadth of understanding across technology, agile, design, and business. Ultimately, as the product manager, you will have the decision-making authority to deliver on parts of a service, taking responsibility for the development, operation, and continual improvement of your product.

About the team

The GovTech Barbados team is responsible for developing multi-disciplinary, user-centered digital teams within the Government of Barbados. Our goals are twofold: first, we want to deliver tangible impact to citizens through excellent public service design and delivery. Second, we want to build a sustainable and enduring digital mindset, skillset, and culture within the government.

It’s an exciting time to join us as we accelerate our delivery phase. We are taking an agile, lean approach to this work, learning as we go from our end-users, public servants, and global experts in digital transformation.

About the role

As a Product Manager, you're a:

• Visionary: You own the product vision, working with stakeholders to ensure it has a strategic fit while maintaining alignment and buy-in.
• User advocate: You understand users and can interpret and communicate their functional and emotional needs to make the correct product decisions.
• Strategist: You develop the product strategy, manage the roadmap, and prioritize the backlog using various techniques to maximize value.
• Leader: You lead the product team, championing the product and coaching others while motivating the team to deliver high-quality work.
• Analyst: You can align data and user research activities to inform decision-making, defining goals and metrics to monitor performance against outcomes.

We are a new team committed to working in the open and building an equitable working environment. 

Key responsibilities

• Own the vision for the product, working with stakeholders to ensure strategic fit and maintain alignment and buy-in.
• Develop the product strategy and manage the product roadmap as well as prioritising the product backlog through a range of techniques to maximise value and return on investment.
• Understand what problem the team is trying to solve. Can align data and user research activities to inform decision-making and action.
• Define product goals and metrics, monitoring performance against outcomes.
• Manage, influence and negotiate with stakeholders and communicate progress and achievements, championing the product.
• Lead the product team, and ensure the product is developed to an appropriate level of quality taking into consideration expected lifetime, investment and timeframes.

Essential attributes

• Can dedicate 100% of your time and brain to understanding and articulating the problems the team is trying to solve.
• Able to define and get buy-in for product definition, prioritisation and delivery approach.
• You are bold and not constrained by old ways of thinking such as “that’s the way we do things around here”.
• Understand constraints (e.g. financial, legal, policy) and are able to challenge those which can be changed.
• Understand users and can interpret/communicate their functional and emotional needs, to make the correct product decisions.
• Can think conceptually and can possibly quickly sketch the concept rather than document it.
• Can simplify things and avoid jargon.
• You are someone your team can trust, who can lead and motivate them, and coach others.
• Able to manage the operational process of designing and running a product or service throughout its entire life cycle.

Contract details

• Contract duration: One (1) year, with potential to extend
• Pay commensurate with qualifications and experience will be offered
• We prefer hybrid (remote and in-person) work, but we will consider entirely remote candidates

Reporting to

Mark Boyce, CEO, GovTech Barbados, or his designate

Terms of Reference

Terms of Reference for this contract are available here: Product Manager