About Health Data Research UK

Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) is the national Institute for data science in health.  Our UK team of experts develop and apply cutting-edge data science approaches to clinical, biological, genomic and other multi-dimensional health data to address the most pressing health research challenges facing the public. 

Our mission is to make game-changing improvements in the health of patients and populations through data science research and innovation.

For the first time we are bringing together our unique nationwide data assets and specialists across academia, research and healthcare to unlock knowledge and deliver new insights from molecule to man.  By undertaking research at scale, across a population of up to 65 million people, we have an unrivalled opportunity to use data to the highest ethical standards to drive breakthroughs in medical research.  This unleashes the potential to improve the way we are able to prevent, detect and diagnose diseases such as cancer, heart disease and asthma.

At Health Data Research UK, we employ talented individuals who bring their own unique skills and experience to support the vision and benefit the whole team.

Purpose of the post

HDR UK requires the services of a senior Chief Product Owner with experience of defining digital strategy to lead the next stage of healthdatagateway.org (HDR UK Innovation Gateway) and associated services.

The role will involve defining the 2021-23 product roadmap and associated materials releases (trusted research environments, partner organisations, publications and data sets) for the gateway. You will own the Gateway product and drive innovation in line with business strategies and goals.

Lead and manage the expectations of multiple stakeholders with different requirements and timelines. Through meticulous co-ordination, this role will manage stakeholder priorities aligned to product releases and be the main point of contact for all parties involved.  This post will provide clarity to the delivery organisation on the structure and planning for releases, as well as all design and implementation acceptance sign-off.

The role reports to report to HDR UK’s Chief Technology Officer.

This role will learn from and build upon the existing work of HDR Innovation Gateway. 

 Main Responsibilities:

Product Owner:

• The product owner leads defining the digital strategy, features and stories for the Health Data Gateway over a two year period. They are responsible for defining and finding agreement on the product strategy for the gateway.

• Leads interaction with all of the product delivery groups across and external to HDR UK across the whole of the UK

• Define end-to-end user journeys to provide simple and compelling user experiences

• Build the feature roadmaps, maintain the product backlog and prioritise features

• Feed the design and development delivery engine based on personas, journeys, features, epics and stories – always staying a step ahead

• Define acceptance criteria and validate the product delivery for robust implementation. 

• Directly support the CTO in documenting and approving designs in Confluence

• Support the CTO to maintain a technical roadmap and sprint plan with delivery organisations

• Lead the test automation strategy for each product release

• Lead on defining stories for globalisation and internationalisation of the Gateway.

Organisation Liaison:

• Working alongside Uniting, Improving and Using Team members on their roadmaps and how they align with the Gateway

• Lead as subject matter expert on defining roadmaps for 2021-23 deliverables, closely aligned to internal HDR UK teams

• Lead on running regular user design workshops for continuous improvement

• Lead on working with multiple national partners to define roadmaps and deliverables

• Occasional software solution prototyping and development of PoCs

• Working in conjunction with a split team between internal and external resources

Team working & management responsibility:

• Lead a team of Business Analysts and Designers and UAT.

• Managing expectations and competing requests from different demand teams (includes metadata catalogues, data access requests, federated analytics)

• Working with scrum master for planning releases

• Leads the continuous improvement strategy across the gateway

• Lead on managing multiple national partners and expectations

Decision making:

•  The post-holder will be responsible for getting sign-off on all product roadmaps

• The post-holder will make all day-to-day operational decisions for their own workload

• Product owner decisions necessary in daily scrums to advance progress of all technical partner projects

• ·Direct involvement in all product & solution selections.

Continuous Improvement:

 HDR UK is dedicated to continuous improvement through our quality management system and demonstrated by our commitment to achieve ISO 9001 accreditation. The post-holder will review, analyse, identify and implement opportunities for quality improvement within their specialism and as part of the wider team through our strategy development and internal audit processes.

Key contacts / relationships:

Work collaboratively across the internal organization (CTO’s office) and externally with 3rd party System Integrators, software vendors, infrastructure providers and end-users (academics and corporate users). Work closely with the internal domain leads owners and the external UX/UI designers. Quality control the work of the external providers.

Knowledge, skills and experience

Essential:

• Minimum of five years' experience in the Product Owner role or equivalent

• Experience in delivering multiple concurrent product backlogs

• Experience in building long-term client relationships

• Passion for customer centricity

• Experience of working with UK Public Sector or Academia or Industry

• Alignment to the HDR UK values.

Desirable:

• Certified Scrum Product Owner qualification

• Experience using Confluence, JIRA, Trello and similar Agile project management tools.

• Experience of Information Governance processes and requirements.

• An understanding of research delivery within the public sector, academia and/or industry.

Dimensions

• This is a full-time 5 day per week role, on a permanent basis

• As a result of the pandemic, staff are currently working remotely. All HDR UK roles are primarily based   at the London offices, however we are flexibly working across a number of geographical locations.   Travel may be required to HDR UK locations and partner organisations.

HDR UK’s values

HDR UK’s values guide how we work together within HDR UK and with our partners and other stakeholders:

1.       Transparency: we will share information, insights and innovations so that we learn faster together.

2.       Optimism: we believe that we can make things better, that we can do things differently and that we can overcome challenges to create a new and thriving health data ecosystem that benefits patients and the public, the NHS, scientific discovery and industry.

3.       Respect: we deliver better results when we work in a truly interdisciplinary way. We listen, share and respect a diversity of thought and opinion, perspective and experience. We are inclusive - leveraging and fairly attributing the expertise and capabilities of others.

4.       Courage: we are leading the way and will be prepared to try new things, take risks, embrace ambiguity and challenge the status quo. We will contribute opinions to shape the future of health data research.

5.       Humility: we have a lot to learn from others; and aim to be free from pride and arrogance.

Equal Opportunities Policy Statement

Health Data Research UK is an equal opportunities employer, and as such aims to treat all employees, consultants and applicants fairly. It is our policy to provide employment equality to all, irrespective of:

• Gender, including gender reassignment

• Marital or civil partnership status

• Having or not having dependants

• Religion or belief

• Race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins)

• Disability

• Sexual orientation

• Age

We are opposed to all forms of unlawful and unfair discrimination. All job applicants and employees who work for us will be treated fairly and will not be unfairly discriminated against on any of the above grounds. Decisions about recruitment and selection, promotion, training or any other benefit will be made objectively and without unlawful discrimination.  Our diversity and inclusion policy is here.