Senior Product Manager (Forward Deployed)

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Senior Product Manager (Forward Deployed)

Department: Tech Services

Employment Type: Fixed Term - Full Time

Location: West Midlands, UK

Reporting To: Paul Thornton Joseph Forrester-Page

Compensation: GBP 70,000 - GBP 80,000 / year

Description

About Rowden

We're building the next UK-headquartered engineering powerhouse.

At Rowden, we design and integrate advanced systems that sense, connect, and protect data in challenging environments where quick decisions are vital. Our solutions use intelligent automation to enhance speed and efficiency and are built to be reliable and straightforward for critical operations in remote or high-pressure settings.

Headquartered in Bristol (UK), we combine modern engineering methods with cutting-edge commercial technology to create adaptable, mission-critical systems. We focus on solving the tough challenges that others overlook, ensuring our customers can operate effectively in an ever-changing world.

Our team of Forward Deployed Specialists

Join Rowden's Forward Deployed Team and work where the action is.

You'll collaborate directly with customers on-site, tackling their most complex technology challenges. From diagnosing critical issues to deploying innovative solutions, you'll be at the forefront of solving real-world problems that matter. If you're hands-on, thrive in fast-paced environments, and want to see the impact of your work up close - this is the team for you.

What's in it for you:

• Impact and Purpose: Your work makes a difference - directly supporting defence, national security, and frontline operators.
• Professional Growth: Experience faster learning, deeper technical challenges, and exposure to real-world constraints that sharpen your skills.
• Team Expansion: Be part of a growing team that's delivering results and scaling up. Help us shape what forward deployment looks like as we expand into new projects and new regions.

The role: Senior Product Manager - Forward DeployedWe are seeking a highly skilled and motivated a Senior Product Manager - Forward Deployed. You will serve as the voice of the customer, embedded within their environment to bridge the gap between their operational needs and our internal delivery teams. This is a strategic, customer-facing role requiring excellent communication, product management expertise, and the ability to translate high-level requirements into actionable plans.

You will shape and lead the delivery of technical engineering services focused on Android-based solutions that enhance the provisioning, usability, and mission-critical capabilities of our customers. Acting as both an advocate for the customer and a leader for agile delivery, you'll play a critical role in ensuring our services deliver maximum impact and value.

Your initial deployment is anticipated to be on-site in the West Midlands for one year, working within a hybrid team of contractors and military personnel for a government organisation. While this role offers hybrid working options, it requires an average of 3 days per week on-site with the customer. Candidates must be willing to obtain a UKNSV security clearance with SC being essential, and DV clearance desirable.

Key Areas of Responsibility

As a Senior Product Manager - Forward Deployedat Rowden, you will play a critical role in ensuring that customer needs are translated into high-impact solutions while driving agile delivery processes. Your expertise will shape the successful development and deployment of mission-critical Android-focused capabilities.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Customer advocacy and engagement: Building trusted relationships with customer stakeholders, gathering and clarifying requirements, and ensuring their operational needs are consistently communicated and prioritised.
• Requirements shaping and alignment: Translating customer goals into clear, actionable requirements, user stories, and epics, and collaborating with internal teams to ensure alignment with technical objectives.
• Agile leadership: Leading sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives, ensuring timely delivery of high-quality outputs that meet the defined standards of readiness and completion.
• Stakeholder communication: Providing regular progress updates, managing expectations, and delivering impactful presentations and product demonstrations to both customer and internal teams.
• Product delivery oversight: Refining backlogs, managing feature prioritisation, and driving iterative development while championing continuous feedback and improvement.

About You

We are looking for someone who is passionate about delivering impactful solutions and building strong customer relationships. You'll gain plenty of experience in this role, but before you do, the prerequisites for the role are:

• Proven Customer Focus: Experience representing an organisation to customers, with a track record of delighting stakeholders through proactive engagement and delivery excellence, particularly within the defence sector.
• Product Management Expertise: Extensive experience managing the full product lifecycle, from requirements gathering to delivery, with a strong focus on iterative development and agile methodologies.
• Technical Understanding: Familiarity with Android-based solutions, software development, systems engineering principles, user experience design principles, focussed on constrained environments.
• Agile Tools Mastery: Proficiency with tools like Jira and Confluence for backlog management, sprint planning, and workflow tracking.
• Strong Communication Skills: Ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders, translate complex needs into actionable tasks, and deliver clear progress updates and demonstrations.
• Leadership & Adaptability: Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and thrive in fast-paced, high-stakes environments requiring creativity and problem-solving.

About you:

The ideal candidate will have a strong balance of technical skills and experience, and should be comfortable:

• Embedding with customers to understand their needs and shaping solutions that deliver mission-critical outcomes.
• Bridging technical teams and business stakeholders by translating complex requirements into actionable plans.
• Steering cross-functional teams through agile processes to ensure timely, high-quality delivery.
• Building trusted relationships through clear communication, proactive engagement, and effective delivery.

Working at Rowden

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!

Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.

Finally, if you feel that you don't meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we'd still love to hear from you!