Senior Product Owner

About Universal Music Group

It’s the passionate and dedicated team at Universal Music who help make us the world’s leading music company. From A&R to finance, legal to digital, sales to marketing, Universal Music is the place to grow and develop your career within a truly commercial and innovative business that leads in everything it does.

Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, age, marital status, background, pregnancy, or caring responsibilities. We also recognise the importance of diversity of thought within our teams and are fully committed to embracing the talents of people with autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and other forms of neurocognitive variation.

We will always seek to make appropriate adjustments to recruitment, workplaces, and work processes to be fully inclusive to people with different needs and working styles. If you need us to make any reasonable adjustments for you from application onwards, including alternatives to the online form or to disclose a neurocognitive condition, please email UniversalMusicCareers@umusic.com.

Department: Global Technology

Global Technology powers the digital ecosystem behind UMG/UMPG. We develop and support secure, scalable systems & platforms used by artists, songwriters, partners & employees worldwide, while championing innovation and cultivating a culture that embraces emerging technologies and continuous improvement.

The Role: Senior Product Owner

The Senior Product Owner is a liaison between our business and development teams, driving software products to success by recognising strategic need and tactical goals. Managing the expectations of our stakeholders across multiple teams is essential with a solution-oriented mindset. They will understand the needs of the business and convert those expectations, utilising extensive domain knowledge, into a clear solution for both end users and development teams within a big data environment, playing an essential role for collaborative and successful products.

Key Responsibilities

Be Technical

• Document and agree requirements with end users
• Form concise and detailed documentation, ensuring it is delivered to the development team in an appropriate form utilising the following techniques to support the software development lifecycle:
  • User stories
  • Process maps
  • Design wireframes
• Orchestrate the creation of tickets, refine tickets through estimation with the team and sprint management, utilising scrum master principles
• Define User Acceptance test plans
• Lead the technical team and undertake technical analysis with the business
• Create business models incorporating process and data modelling
• Develop a sound knowledge of the business domain whilst building an understanding of key dependencies on systems both up and downstream
• Assist our programme managers in overall project management & delivery
• Be a passionate advocate of the product vision
• Contribute to effective presentations and workshops with key business stakeholders

Be Collaborative

• Build positive relationships with business stakeholders and development teams by understanding challenges and proposing innovative solutions
• Facilitate regular meetings with stakeholders to gather requirements, update them on progress and addressing concerns from the development team and other business users
• Communicate project status to executive level business leaders and development team members throughout the course of a project
• Manage prioritisation of the product backlog to be continually aligned to business value
• Acquire subject matter expertise and provide thought leadership in our products and processes, to drive excellence in the end product
• Experience working with UX design teams

Skills And Experience Required

Necessary

• You will have a strong track record across the full lifecycle of projects, proving the ability to communicate with business stakeholders, understand business pain points, translate requirements into solutions, and transfer knowledge to an Agile project team for multiple IT products
• Strong back-end skills, including solid experience in writing SQL queries and analysing data
• End to end experience of the product and software lifecycles
• Experience of project management/product ownership
• Demonstrable evidence of analysing and documenting complex business processes / process mapping and managing with stakeholders
• Proven track record working as a Senior Business Analyst/ Business Analyst
• Help design solutions to problems using wireframes and other techniques
• Work with the development team (local & offshore) to ensure on-time delivery
• A proven track record in Software Development
• Proven experience interacting directly with end users
• Results orientated with exceptional communication and interpersonal skills
• Total and certified understanding of Agile project methodology
• Ability to break solutions down into sprints working in an Agile project methodology
• Experienced in defining Epics and User Stories
• Strong understanding of key technologies and limitations
• Able to command respect with Senior Business Managers
• Ability to drive coherent product development
• Business focused
• Self-starter, strong initiative & leadership
• Experienced in using Atlassian software (such as Jira for backlog management and Confluence for detailed product documentation) or equivalent tools

Nice to have

• Experience of a complex, back-end heavy, technical project
• Good understanding of the Music Publishing or Record Company business

About UMG UK

We are Universal Music Group UK – the UK’s leading music-based entertainment company. We exist to shape culture through the power of artistry. We help UK artists produce, distribute and promote the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music to inspire and entertain fans at home and around the world.

Bonus Tracks: Your Benefits

• Group Personal Pension Scheme (between 3% and 9%)
• Private Medical Insurance
• 25 paid days of annual leave
• Interest Free Season Ticket Loan
• Holiday Purchase scheme
• Dental and Travel Insurance options
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Salary Sacrifice Cars
• Subsidised Gym Membership
• Employee Discounts (Reward Gateway)

Just So You Know…

The company presents this job description as a guide to the major areas and duties for which the jobholder is accountable. However, the business operates in an environment that demands change and the jobholder's specific responsibilities and activities will vary and develop. Therefore, the job description should be seen as indicative and not as a permanent, definitive, and exhaustive statement.

Key skills/competency

• Product Ownership
• Agile Methodology
• SQL
• Data Analysis
• Business Analysis
• Stakeholder Management
• User Stories
• Jira
• Confluence
• Software Development Lifecycle