Technical Product Owner - Workday People Systems

Are you an experienced product owner who can connect People and Culture priorities with high-quality technical delivery?

We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world-leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge.

This is an opportunity to transform our People Systems, with Workday at the core alongside PageUp and VNDLY. You will help turn complex business needs into valuable, deliverable improvements and support the growth of Workday adoption across the organisation.

• Work with the team of Workday engineers to focus team effort on the product vision, provide the forward view of the development roadmap and inspire them to complete sprint goals.
• Own and manage the product development roadmap, understanding and managing dependencies, and raise any risks to delivery.
• Engage with the business product owner to understand scope, and value of new business requests, highlight trade off decisions and agree priority.
• Build strong relationships with business stakeholders, translating business needs into requirements that technical teams can interpret and deliver.
• Create clear epics and user stories, ensuring stories have clear acceptance criteria and definitions of done, are reviewed, refined and ready for delivery.
• Own and manage the product backlog in Jira, prioritising based on the agreed roadmap, ensuring sufficient capacity for annual operational activities (benefits selection, bonus and pay review) is accounted for.
• Lead story refinement and sprint planning, participate in Agile ceremonies and support continuous improvement in delivery practices.
• Work with the Technical Solution Owner to understand the broader architecture and solution design, incorporating future product innovations into the roadmap.
• Stay current with product, technology and business process changes, sharing knowledge across the wider team.

This position has been classified as a hybrid role, requiring the selected candidate to typically spend 40-60% of their time collaborating and connecting face-to-face at their dedicated location. Aside from our hybrid principles, other flexible working requests will be considered from the first day of employment, including other work arrangements should you require adjustments due to a disability or long-term health condition.

About You

You will bring strong technical product ownership experience, together with the communication, judgement and delivery focus needed to work across business and technical teams. You will be comfortable explaining technical topics clearly and constructively saying no when required.

To be successful, you will need:

• A deep understanding of software product development and delivery.
• An understanding of Human Capital Management (HCM)/ HR technologies core concepts and components.
• Practical experience of using Agile and Scrum methodologies in product development.
• Experience owning and prioritising product backlogs, eliciting requirements, defining epics and user stories and managing product roadmaps.
• Strong stakeholder management skills and experience building effective relationships.
• Knowledge of product and development management tools such as Jira and Miro.
• The ability to analyse complex information and data, map data flows, and draw well-reasoned conclusions.
• Excellent written, verbal and presentation skills, including the ability to communicate technical information to non-technical audiences and senior leaders.
• Ability to build understanding of unfamiliar systems and processes quickly, using structured questioning and analysis.
• Ability to build shared understanding of priorities and outcomes across a technical delivery team.
• Curiosity, sound judgement and the confidence to challenge priorities constructively.
• Experience of product ownership of Workday.
• Experience coaching colleagues or customers in Agile ways of working.

Location: Cambridge/Hybrid with 40-60% of time in office

Hours: Full-time 35 hours per week

Contract: Permanent

As Technical Product Owner, you will be embedded in the HR Solutions delivery team and bridge the technical and business worlds. Working closely with People and Culture stakeholders, engineers, the Technical Solution Owner and external partners, you will have a holistic view across all business requests, operational activities, technical debt and innovation opportunities to inform prioritisation decisions and build a robust development roadmap.

The role requires confidence working with complex data, understanding dependencies and constructively challenging requests where required. You will translate business needs into clear, prioritised requirements, working with Workday engineers and the Technical Solution Owner to assess options, understand dependencies and agree deliverable outcomes. Hands-on configuration and detailed solution design sit with the specialist delivery team.

If you meet the above minimum requirements, we encourage you to apply. Your application will be even stronger if you can also demonstrate the following desirable criteria:

For a detailed job description, please refer to the link at the bottom of the advert on our careers site.