Job summary
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office pursues our national interests and projects the UK’s role in the world. We promote the interests of British citizens, safeguard the UK’s security, defend our values, reduce poverty and tackle global challenges with our international partners. We employ more than 17,000 staff in 179 countries and territories, across our diplomatic and development offices worldwide, which consists of 282 officially designated Posts. Our UK-based staff work in King Charles Street, London, Abercrombie House in East Kilbride and in Milton Keynes.
Job description
You will be joining FCDO at a time of transformation with the opportunity to shape digital tools to support front line delivery. As we transition our internal systems, land new digital products and expand the scope of some of our existing digital platforms, we are building an expanded product function to design and integrate our products, spot efficiencies in existing processes and continuously improve our digital services to provide the best user experience.
As a Product Manager, you will lead and be responsible for a group of digital products. Working with multi-disciplinary teams across the Directorate, you will apply knowledge of our customers and business goals to frame problems and set priorities for the development of new products. You will build strong relationships with FCDO programme and policy staff across our overseas networks and central teams to support internal communications, use feedback to evaluate our products and to help the FCDO achieve its goals in a more efficient and effective way.
Importantly, you will also care about the people our services deliver experiences for and define what success looks like for them.
You will work in an innovative Digital, Data and Technology team, exposed to methods and frameworks that will allow you to build a knowledge base to accelerate your career. 10% of your time will be for learning and development; you will have access to resources through the FCDO's International Academy and the Government Digital Service, which cover on-the-job learning, coaching/mentoring and formal training.
Roles and Responsibilities
All the roles will be responsible for building out new platforms for FCDO and understanding how we get best value out of them across the organisation. The roles will focus on the following platforms:
- Digital Products and Services: We create and continuously improve the digital products that underpin the FCDO’s global mission – from responding to crises and supporting British nationals overseas to driving international development and hosting major diplomatic events. Our portfolio includes tools such as products for managing official visits and high‑level engagements, knowledge and content platforms, and data and insight solutions.
- Live service products including end user devices and applications, networks and infrastructure. This includes hardware such as laptops, desktops and mobiles and applications such as ServiceNow and M365 including co-pilot and in house developed applications for use across the FCDO.
- Consular Products: This includes a diverse portfolio of public facing digital services for example applying for an Emergency Travel Document, or contacting the FCDO for Consular Assistance, as well as the products used by our overseas network to directly support their Consular work such as our core case management platform, and appointment booking system.
The successful candidate will:
- Have ownership of Products – creating and communicating a strategy, managing our digital products through discovery, design and completion.
- Oversee product development work – acting as Scrum Master to coordinating work across Agile multidisciplinary teams, using, for example DevOps and/or Kanban tools.
- Apply user-focused design – using user research and business analysis to determine customer needs and prioritise software development work.
- Problem solve – devising strategic rather than short-term tactical digital solutions, identifying efficiencies in our products and understanding how each contributes to the programme delivery space.
- Evaluate digital products – defining measures of success against Delivery Platform strategy and business requirements.
Please note that some roles may have line management responsibilities.
You will be required to travel between the UK offices every month, to collaborate with colleagues. Overseas travel is likely to be infrequent, and duration of the trip will depend on location.
