Lead Data Product Manager at UST, Leeds, £Contract Rate

Role description

Location: Leeds, W. Yorkshire (Hybrid- 3 days per week working onsite-Mandatory)

Immediate start

Permanent/ Contract inside IR35/ Fixed term contract

The Lead Data Product Manager is accountable for shaping, governing, and driving the success of enterprise data products across business domains. The role owns product vision, roadmap, backlog prioritisation, and value realisation, working closely with senior business stakeholders, cross functional delivery teams, and vendor supplied squads. This role operates with strategic authority, influencing product direction, delivery priorities, and operating ways of working, while ensuring measurable business outcomes and long term platform sustainability.

Scope of Responsibility

• Product strategy, vision, and roadmap
• Product backlog ownership and sprint planning
• Senior stakeholder and client product forums
• Cross squad dependency management
• Value measurement and monetisation strategy
• Oversight of vendor supplied delivery teams

Key Accountabilities

Product Leadership & Stakeholder Alignment

• Own and communicate the vision, value proposition, and strategic direction of data products across business and technology stakeholders.
• Act as the primary product interface for senior client and business stakeholders.
• Translate business priorities into clear product outcomes, capabilities, and delivery plans.
• Provide oversight and direction to vendor supplied squads, ensuring alignment to UST and client standards, ways of working, and value led delivery.

Roadmap, Backlog & Prioritisation

• Define and maintain a clear, outcome driven product roadmap balancing near term delivery with longer term strategic objectives.
• Own prioritisation decisions based on business value, feasibility, risk, and user impact.
• Ensure product backlogs are well structured, groomed, and aligned to agreed objectives and governance expectations.
• Identify and manage inter team dependencies to support predictable delivery and release planning.

Cross Functional Product Delivery

• Enable strong collaboration between data engineering, analytics, governance, architecture, and business teams.
• Ensure alignment on data definitions, quality expectations, and usage policies across all delivered data products.
• Lead discovery, requirements definition, and validation activities to ensure the product direction remains value focused.
• Drive shared understanding through structured documentation, product demos, and stakeholder communication.

. Value Realisation & Measurement

• Define success measures and KPIs for data products, covering adoption, performance, and business impact.
• Track and report on realised value against agreed objectives.
• Partner with finance and business stakeholders on benefit tracking, ROI articulation, and cost benefit assessments.
• Ensure products contribute to strategic outcomes such as operational efficiency, decision making improvement, customer experience uplift, or revenue enablement.

Strategic Influence & Continuous Improvement

• Apply industry knowledge and market trends in data, AI, and digital product management to influence strategy and delivery approaches.
• Identify opportunities to improve scalability, usability, efficiency, and innovation across the data platform landscape.
• Champion continuous improvement, reduced complexity, and outcome based delivery.
• Support data literacy, responsible data usage, and self service analytics maturity across stakeholder groups.

Decision Rights & Authority

• Authority to define and evolve data product strategy and roadmap within the agreed engagement scope.
• Authority to prioritise backlog items and sequence delivery based on value and dependencies.
• Influence over delivery standards, operating cadence, and quality expectations for vendor supplied squads.
• Strategic advisor to client stakeholders on data product direction, investment focus, and future value opportunities.

Core Skills & Capabilities

• Senior stakeholder communication and influence
• Product strategy, roadmap, and backlog leadership
• Value led prioritisation and decision making
• Cross functional delivery leadership
• KPI definition, tracking, and value reporting
• Strategic thinking and systems perspective
• Consulting mindset with strong commercial awareness

Interested? Apply today for a confidential discussion with Talent Acquisition team.

#UST

Skills

Product Management, Data Analysis, Stakeholder Management, Reporting and Analytics

About UST
UST is a global digital transformation solutions provider. For more than 20 years, UST has worked side by side with the world’s best companies to make a real impact through transformation. Powered by technology, inspired by people and led by purpose, UST partners with their clients from design to operation. With deep domain expertise and a future-proof philosophy, UST embeds innovation and agility into their clients’ organizations. With over 30,000 employees in 30 countries, UST builds for boundless impact—touching billions of lives in the process.