Overview
Product Owner – Strand, London, WC2R 2LS
About Us
King’s College London is an internationally renowned university delivering exceptional education and world-leading research. We are dedicated to driving positive and sustainable change in society and realising our vision of making the world a better place. We host more than 33,000 students from over 190 countries around the world.
This role sits within the IT Digital Solutions Directorate, a key driver of enterprise-wide digital transformation supporting King’s strategic ambitions. You will be part of the Data Solutions team, a high-performing, cross-functional team delivering scalable, modern data platforms and integration capabilities across the university.
We are at an exciting stage in our journey, building the next-generation data platform that will underpin analytics, integration, and AI across King’s. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to a large-scale transformation programme and help shape how data is used to drive insight, innovation, and impact.
You will work in a collaborative, agile environment alongside architects, engineers, analysts, and stakeholders across the organisation—where your contribution will directly influence how King’s harnesses the power of data.
About the role
The Scaled Agile Product Owner (PO) is responsible for maximising the value delivered by IT Data Solutions products within a SAFe Agile Release Train (ART). Acting as the voice of the customer, the PO translates strategic intent into actionable user stories, ensuring alignment from Vision → Epic → Feature → Story → Outcome.
The role ensures that data products and services deliver measurable value aligned to Strategy 2030, supporting a simple, nimble, and effective King’s.
The PO is responsible for defining user stories with the team and prioritising the team backlog to ensure alignment with customer and stakeholder needs. Being the content authority of Team Backlogs, they will prioritise work within Sprints and accept completion of PBIs. They will work with both business and IT stakeholders as well as being part of Dynamic agile teams and will be comfortable working on multiple workstreams.
Key Responsibilities
1. Backlog Ownership & Value Delivery
- Own and manage the Team Backlog, ensuring it is prioritised based on value, risk, and strategic alignment
- Translate Features into well-defined User Stories with clear acceptance criteria
- Ensure every story links to a Feature outcome and contributes to measurable value (ROCKETS framework)
- Continuously refine and prioritise work based on feedback, data, and learning
2. Stakeholder Collaboration & Alignment
- Act as the primary interface between Product Management, Business Owners, and Agile Teams
- Collaborate with stakeholders across faculties and professional services to understand data needs
- Ensure alignment between business priorities and technical delivery
- Communicate progress, risks, and value delivered to stakeholders
3. SAFe Event Participation
- Actively contribute to PI Planning, Iteration Planning, Backlog Refinement, System Demos, and Inspect & Adapt
- Support the team in delivering committed PI Objectives
- Provide clarity on priorities and accept/reject completed stories
4. Data Product & Service Focus
- Define and prioritise requirements for data products.
- Ensure data solutions are aligned to enterprise data architecture, governance, and compliance standards
- Work closely with Data Engineers, Analysts, and Architects to ensure feasible and sustainable solutions
5. Value Measurement & Outcomes
-
Define success criteria and outcome metrics for Features and Stories
-
Track value through outcomes, adoption, behaviour change, and cost vs benefit
-
Contribute to quarterly value reporting (VM2QR) aligned to ROCKETS:
-
Risk & Compliance
-
Opportunity & Growth
-
Cost Efficiency
-
Knowledge & Innovation
-
Excellence in Service
-
Thriving Community
-
Sustainability
6. Continuous Improvement & Learning
- Promote a test-and-learn mindset, supporting MVP delivery and iterative development
- Participate in Inspect & Adapt workshops to improve flow and outcomes
- Identify opportunities to reduce waste, duplication, and inefficiencies across data products
Key Relationships
- Product Managers (strategic alignment and feature definition)
- Business Owners and stakeholders across King’s
- Agile Delivery Teams (Developers, Data Engineers, Analysts, QA)
- Scrum Master / Delivery Manager
- Enterprise Architecture & Data Governance teams
- ACE (Agile Centre of Excellence)
This is a full time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered an indefinite contract.
IMPORTANT: Before applying for this role, please make sure you have the right to work in the country where the role is based. Unless it clearly stipulates within in the job advert above that the hiring company is looking to or able to sponsor applicants it is deemed that the hiring employer will only consider applications from those able to comply with and work in the country where the role is based.
