Lead Product Manager
| Posting date: | 12 January 2026 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £69,501 per year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 01 February 2026 |
| Location: | Swansea |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 443283/1 |
Summary
Are you an experienced product leader who enjoys taking responsibility and pushing boundaries?
If so, we'd love to hear from you!
Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:
- Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
- 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays a privilege day for the King’s birthday
- Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.
Read more in the Benefits section below!
Find out more about what it's like working at Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - Department for Transport Careers
As a lead Product Manager you will oversee a portfolio of digital products, manage cross-functional teams, and act as a key liaison between technical teams, stakeholders, and senior leadership.
The Lead Product Manager role is a critical role in driving the development and maintenance of new and existing DVLA services during and exciting period of development.
Key elements of this role are:
- Managing a portfolio of products, providing leadership, direction and escalation, whilst also acting as product manager for the most complex areas.
- Define and articulate a portfolio level product vision, roadmap, and strategy, aligning with organisational goals and government digital transformation objectives.
- Collaborate with internal business teams, senior leadership and external stakeholders to gather requirements, manage expectations, and ensure alignment.
- Drive agile and lean product development processes, ensuring timely delivery within scope, budget, and quality standards.
- Ensure operational running of the product, be involved in any ongoing incidents and support the prioritisation of the team tin the resolution of the issues and defects vs ongoing change commitments.
- Setting strategy and managing resource allocation within product to support product development as well as operational management of the product.
- Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure product success and drive continuous improvement.
- Working closely with other Lead Product Managers to ensure synergy across the product organisation.
- Contribute to the DVLA product management capability to build and develop standards and guidance across the capability.
- Working closely with the Head of Product to provide leadership and direction within the product community.
- Being involved in hiring Senior Product Managers and managing any related contracts.
- Budgeting and forecasting across the product portfolio.
- Manage and mentor a team of product managers, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
Lead Product Managers manage a complex portfolio of products at the heart of the delivery of DVLA change programmes. You will be responsible for line management, development and coaching of Senior Product managers, providing the escalation route through to the Head of Product and ensuring the consolidated delivery of technical change across multiple squads.
You will be confident challenging approaches and be a positive role model of the values, attitudes and behaviours of the capability. You will set the vision and strategy of the technical outcomes, manage dependencies, and identify and manage priorities to ensure the successful delivery of the technical products based on introducing value within the products.
You will need to have excellent communication skills and will engage with senior stakeholders at all levels to support the effective delivery of those products and services.
You will own the development and continuous improvement of the product portfolio, turning the vision into reality. You will ensure the product vision is delivered in the most effective way, building something that is reusable and transformational. You will be responsible for balancing requirements within in change initiatives across multiple programmes, continuous product improvements to ensure the product is maintained to DVLA standards, managing defects, technical debt and other improvements identified.
You will work closely with Project and Portfolio Management teams to align any project plans of approved change initiatives with your roadmap for delivery.
You will work closely and collaborate with service owners and other stakeholders across directorates to understand the aims, objectives and changes required by the services that will be facilitated and implemented by your product.
Your responsibilities will include but will not be limited to:
- Manage people and products at a strategic, technical, and working level
- Maintain the high-level roadmap at a portfolio level and ensuring all product within the portfolio have coherent road maps
- Be involved in a range of programme management activities relevant to their product portfolio
- Be involved in recruiting product managers at all levels and contractors
- Provide leadership in your portfolio and across the local product community, working closely with the head of product
For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.
Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills set out in the Civil Service Line Management Standards. We aim to empower line managers to create teams where people can flourish and deliver excellent outcomes for the public.
Open Session: Would you like to find out more about the role, the digital team and what it’s like to work at DVLA? If so, we are organising a familiarisation session where you can virtually 'meet the team' on Wednesday 28th January at 12:00pm
Please click here to book on.
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