Early Years Product Specialist

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United Kingdom.

📋 Description

• Collaborate with customers, users, and internal teams to gather insights on existing processes, challenges, policy objectives, and desired results.

• Analyze and document business processes, service workflows, business rules, data requirements, and user journeys for Early Years Funding and associated services.

• Convert statutory guidance, operational policy, and local authority practices into clear product specifications, acceptance criteria, and potential solutions.

• Decompose complex issues into manageable features, user stories, and increments suitable for delivery in an agile framework.

• Assist in product discovery by helping to define problem statements, user needs, success metrics, assumptions, and options.

• Work closely with Product Managers/Owners, Designers, Developers, QA, and Support teams to ensure a shared understanding of requirements and priorities.

• Facilitate workshops, interviews, and playback sessions with stakeholders to confirm understanding, align expectations, and foster consensus.

• Take ownership or provide support in creating high-quality BA artifacts, including process maps, decision tables, requirements, business rules, user stories, acceptance criteria, wireframes, and service models.

• Ensure that requirements are clear, consistent, prioritized, traceable, and updated as products evolve.

• Aid in backlog refinement and sprint planning by ensuring that items are well-defined, testable, and aligned with business value.

• Collaborate with delivery teams during the build and testing phases to clarify requirements, resolve questions, support test scenario design, and validate outcomes.

• Leverage customer insights, operational data, service feedback, and performance metrics to identify opportunities for product and process enhancements.

• Evaluate the impact of policy, regulatory, or operational changes on product behavior, workflows, data, and reporting.

• Support solution evaluation by assessing whether implemented changes meet user needs, regulatory intent, and operational goals.

• Serve as a subject matter expert for Early Years Funding processes and contribute to knowledge sharing across the organization.

⛳️ Requirements

• Understanding of Early Years Funding processes, including eligibility, applications, provider submissions, validation, payments, and reporting.

• Demonstrated experience in a Product, software, digital, or product delivery environment.

• Proficient in translating complex business, policy, or operational requirements into clear, actionable software specifications.

• Capability to interpret statutory guidance and operational policy, translating these into system requirements, workflows, and business rules.

• Strong skills in process analysis and modeling, including documenting current and future state processes, workflows, and business rules.

• Experience working within agile delivery teams, including backlog refinement, user story development, and iterative delivery methodologies.

• Ability to write clear, concise, and testable user stories and acceptance criteria.

• Background in facilitating workshops and engaging diverse stakeholders to identify needs, resolve uncertainties, and align priorities.

• Experience in producing and interpreting artifacts such as process maps, user journeys, wireframes, prototypes, decision tables, and requirements documentation.

• Working knowledge of how modern software solutions are designed, developed, tested, and released, including the flow of requirements through delivery.

• Understanding of both functional and non-functional requirements, including usability, accessibility, performance, security, and audit considerations.

• Familiarity with tools such as Jira, Confluence, Figma, Miro, Visio, or similar platforms.

• Awareness of user-centered design principles, with experience collaborating with design and research teams.

🏝️ Benefits

• Private Medical Cover funded by NEC for Employees (with the option to add family members at an additional cost).

• 25 days of paid holiday with the option to buy/sell (FTE).

• 4 x basic salary life assurance cover funded by NEC (with the option to increase cover at an additional cost).

• A Group Pension Plan with excellent employer contributions up to a maximum of 8.5%.

• A range of flexible benefits tailored to your individual needs.

• All colleagues receive free access to LinkedIn Learning, offering over 15,000 courses across a wide array of subjects. Learn what you want, when you want, and how you want.