Business Analyst

Product Owner / Business Analyst

Job title:

Product Owner / Business Analyst

Location:

Oxford with monthly travel to Dublin office (one trip per month)

Reporting to:

Senior Product Manager

Job summary:

Own the definition of product change on the Hellios platform end to end - taking a concept from internal stakeholders or customers, gathering and challenging the requirements, defining a phased solution, and breaking it down into epics and stories a scrum team can build from without ambiguity.

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ABOUT THE ROLE

This is a combined Product Owner and Business Analyst role. You will sit between our customers, our internal stakeholders and our scrum teams, and you will be accountable for the quality of what goes into the backlog.

The role suits someone who is comfortable in a workshop with senior stakeholders in the morning and in a refinement session with developers in the afternoon; someone who is product-minded enough to shape a solution and technical enough to understand how it will actually be built.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Discovery and requirements

• Take a concept or business problem and turn it into a defined, agreed and documented scope.
• Run requirements-gathering sessions with internal stakeholders across Product, Commercial, Operations and Customer Success, and directly with customers in our buyer and supplier communities.
• Challenge what you are given — separate the underlying need from the solution being requested, and test assumptions before they reach the backlog.
• Document current-state process and system behaviour so that proposed change is assessed against what actually exists today.

  Solution definition

• Define the solution and phase it: a clear MVP that delivers value early, with subsequent phases scoped, sequenced and justified.
• Work with engineering leads to test feasibility and understand the architectural and data implications of each option.
• Surface decisions, assumptions, dependencies and open questions explicitly, and drive them to closure rather than carrying them into a sprint.
• Work with UI/UX design to ensure the designed experience matches the defined requirement, and that edge cases are covered.

  Backlog ownership

• Break the solution into epics and user stories, with acceptance criteria written in Given/When/Then format.
• Write stories that are independently testable - each one deliverable and verifiable without assuming that sibling tickets are complete.
• Own, prioritise and refine the backlog for one or more scrum teams, keeping it ready at least a sprint ahead of delivery.
• Act as the decision-maker on scope and behaviour questions during the sprint, so that developers are never blocked waiting for an answer.
• Accept or reject delivered work against the acceptance criteria you have written.

  Delivery and release

• Work with QA on test approach and coverage, and provide in-sprint clarification as testing progresses.
• Contribute to release notes and to change communications for customers.
• Measure what was delivered against what was intended, and feed that back into the next phase.

  KEY REQUIREMENTS

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  Knowledge and experience

• Demonstrable experience as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, or in a combined role, delivering a software product within a scrum or agile environment.
• A track record of taking a concept through to delivered software, and the artefacts to evidence it: requirements documentation, solution definitions, epics and stories you have written yourself.
• Experience writing acceptance criteria that developers and QA can work from directly, without having to reverse-engineer the intent.
• Experience of MVP definition and phased delivery, including the discipline to hold a scope line when it is under pressure.
• Experience gathering requirements directly from external customers, not solely from internal proxies.
• Comfortable working with technical teams on architecture, APIs, data models and integrations - able to read an API specification, understand a data model, and hold your own in a technical discussion.
• Experience in a B2B SaaS (desirable)
• Exposure to supplier risk, compliance, procurement or financial services (desirable, not essential - the domain can be learned).

  Qualifications and skills

• CSPO (Certified Scrum Product Owner) or equivalent, such as PSPO or an ICAgile product ownership certification — desirable, or a willingness to attain it.
• A technical background: a degree in computer science, engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent hands-on experience in development, QA, technical consultancy or solution architecture.
• Working knowledge of SQL and confidence interrogating data to support your own analysis (desirable).
• Familiarity with Jira, Azure DevOps or an equivalent backlog tool, and with wireframing or prototyping tools.
• Excellent written communication. Precise, unambiguous documentation is a core output of this role, not an afterthought.
• A confident facilitator, able to run a stakeholder workshop and a developer refinement session with equal ease.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, and able to impose structure on it.
• Accuracy, attention to detail and an evidence-based approach to decisions.

  WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

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• You have taken at least one significant concept from initial idea to a defined, phased solution that stakeholders have signed off.
• The stories you write go into a sprint and come out delivered, without repeated clarification cycles or mid-sprint rescoping.
• Engineering trusts your tickets. QA can test from your acceptance criteria without needing a briefing.
• Stakeholders come to you directly with problems, rather than with pre-formed solutions.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Training will be given on our platform and on the specific communities we serve.

The Company’s policy of blended working requires the postholder to work two designated days in the office and three days working from home. This policy may be reviewed from time to time.

THE COMPANY

Hellios Information Management is a supplier information and risk management company operating in the financial services, defence and retail sectors. The company was founded to benefit major blue-chip organisations and their suppliers by providing a single, streamlined approach to supplier assurance, and by sharing data across an industry community in areas such as modern slavery, cyber security and GDPR.