Senior Product Manager

Location: Remote, UK
Salary: £70,000 per year

About us

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. 

We believe in a future of working in schools where being challenged doesn’t mean being overworked. A future where data steers progress, without overwhelming staff. And where everyone working in a school is reminded of what inspired them to get into education in the first place, every day. 

Our School Management Tools are already making a difference in over 12,500 schools. Giving time and power back to staff; turning data into clear, actionable insights; and supporting happier workdays for over 350,000 hardworking people. 

At the heart of our brand is a recognition that the challenges schools face today aren’t just about efficiency, outputs and productivity - but about creating happier working lives for the people who drive education every day: the staff. We want to make schools more joyful places to work, as well as learn.

About the role

We’re looking for an analytical, empathetic and highly collaborative Senior Product Manager to join our Arbor product team.

You’ll build a deep understanding of real-world school problems, user needs and the market landscape, and use that to underpin your strategy and decision making. You’ll work to bring Arbor’s full suite together: the MIS, SAMpeople, Timetabler and Arbor Finance, in particular to meet the needs of school groups. You’ll own the full lifecycle from concept to launch and beyond, handling overlapping development cycles across products with different architectures and delivery teams, and act as a cross-functional catalyst that unifies engineering, design and commercial teams around a coherent suite experience.

Ultimately, you’ll be accountable for driving cross-sell and adoption across the suite, increasing user satisfaction, and clarifying the commercial offer to accelerate revenue expansion.

Core responsibilities

• Own and maintain a strategic product roadmap aligned with company goals, while staying informed and challenging the strategic direction.
• Define problems and hypotheses based on customer needs and feedback, ensuring alignment with the product strategy.
• Collaborate with Engineering and Product Design during discovery to identify assumptions, risks, and testing strategies.
• In collaboration with Product Design, conduct thorough user research and user-test prototypes and designs, to validate potential solutions and de-risk delivery.
• Plan and coordinate the delivery of product development in partnership with the Engineering Manager, through iterative sprint cycles and regular team ceremonies
• Use data-driven iteration and testing to measure impact and inform adjustments.
• Maintain contextual awareness of the business, education sector, and user needs, and effectively communicate this to the team.
• Foster collaboration, communication, and a culture of shared learning within the team and across departments.
• Champion a user-centric approach using feedback, metrics, and research to inform product decisions.
• Document all work stages and contribute to team knowledge and setting up other teams (including Sales and Customer Teams) for success.
• Proactively communicate with stakeholders on milestones, progress, and changes.
• Work with our go to market committee and other departments to successfully launch new products. 
• Continuously seek improvement opportunities and share learnings.

About you

We’re looking for a clear communicator who can take complex requirements and turn them into a prioritised roadmap and backlog for their engineering team. Beyond that, we’d love to see:

• Proven experience working in a senior product role, with cross-functional teams, including engineering, design, finance, legal and marketing.
• Experience working on complex requirements across multiple domains, and/or a proven track record working with data products where details matter!
• Demonstrable track record of taking new products from concept to launch, in collaboration with go-to-market teams.
• Comfortable working with remote teams. 
• Passion for building user-centric products that make a difference.
• Experience in the education sector is advantageous.
• Someone who thrives in a fast paced environment with multiple internal stakeholders and high levels of collaboration.