Product Owner – Construction SaaS

Role Purpose:

The role focuses on understanding real customer needs, translating them into prioritised product outcomes, and ensuring consistent, high‑quality delivery through remote, multi‑disciplinary teams.

A core expectation of the role is to apply Jobs To Be Done (JTBD), structured client discovery, and strong information management principles within the context of complex construction and infrastructure delivery. A deep understanding of the industry will be needed.

Key Accountabilities:

Product Ownership, Backlog Management & Delivery Execution

• Act as the accountable Product Owner for assigned SaaS product areas, translating product strategy into a clear, prioritised and delivery-ready backlog
• Own and manage the product backlog, including:
• New product features
• Customer‑requested enhancements
• Customer‑raised bugs
• Regression defects
• Technical debt
• Produce high-quality user stories, epics, acceptance criteria, release notes and detailed Feature Requirement Documents that engineering, QA, UX, product marketing and stakeholders can act on without ambiguity
• Ensure backlog items are:
• Refined
• Prioritised
• Estimated
• Ready for delivery
• Use Jira, GitHub or equivalent Agile delivery tools to manage backlog health, sprint readiness, delivery status, dependencies, release scope and traceability
• Balance competing demand between:
• Bugs vs features
• Customer requests vs strategic roadmap
• Speed vs quality vs long‑term maintainability

Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) & Problem Definition

• Apply Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) thinking to:
• Identify the underlying problems customers are trying to solve
• Avoid solution‑led or feature‑led decision making
• Focus on outcomes rather than requests
• Produce clear JTBD statements defining:
• Job
• Desired outcome
• Context and constraints
• Use JTBD insights to:
• Shape backlog themes
• Inform prioritisation decisions
• Evaluate feature value

Client Discovery, Engagement & Customer Advocacy

• Plan and run structured client discovery activities, including:
• Interviews and workshops
• Workflow walkthroughs
• Pain‑point and constraint analysis
• Regularly present:
• Product updates
• New features
• Roadmap slices
• Act as the primary product contact for customers, managing expectations clearly and professionally
• Translate customer feedback into:
• Validated product needs
• Prioritised backlog items
• Ensure commitments to clients align with agreed governance and strategy
• Lead detailed client engagement across discovery, requirements validation, demonstrations, adoption feedback and post-release review, ensuring customers feel heard while maintaining product discipline

Product Marketing, Go-to-Market & Commercial Alignment

• Support product marketing and go-to-market activity by clearly articulating customer problems, product value, release benefits, differentiators and adoption messages
• Work with Product Managers, sales, customer success and marketing stakeholders to prepare launch materials, client-facing product narratives, demos, FAQs and release communications
• Contribute to pricing, packaging, adoption, usage and value-realisation discussions by providing evidence from clients, product data and market insight
• Track feature adoption, customer feedback, product usage and commercial impact to inform prioritisation and future roadmap decisions

Construction Industry Understanding

• Develop a strong understanding of:
• Construction and infrastructure project lifecycles
• Design, delivery, and operational phases
• Contractor, client, consultant, and supply‑chain perspectives
• Understand the realities of construction environments, including:
• Programme pressure
• Commercial constraints
• Contractual obligations
• Regulatory and assurance requirements
• Ensure product decisions are practical, usable, and grounded in construction workflows

Information Management Principles & Standards

• Build a deep working understanding of information management (IM) principles, including:
• Information as a structured project asset
• Ownership, lifecycle, and accountability
• Data quality, traceability, and auditability
• Develop familiarity with recognised standards and practices, including:
• ISO 19650 principles
• Common Data Environment (CDE) concepts
• Metadata, naming, and classification
• Ensure product features:
• Support compliant information workflows
• Reinforce, not undermine, information governance
• Work with the Strategic Product Director to ensure product decisions align with the wider information and data strategy

Delivery Coordination & Agile Working (Developing)

• Work with remote engineering teams operating in:
• Sprint‑based delivery
• Hybrid / Kanban‑style approaches
• Participate in and support:
• Backlog refinement
• Sprint planning
• Reviews and demonstrations
• Track delivery progress, dependencies, and risks
• Escalate delivery issues appropriately and early
• Build practical understanding of:
• Agile delivery principles
• Incremental value delivery
• Prioritisation under constraint

AI Product Capability & Innovation

• Bring awareness of AI-enabled product opportunities, including workflow automation, intelligent recommendations, data extraction, summarisation, predictive insights and assisted decision-making
• Work with technical stakeholders to define responsible, practical and user-centred AI features that solve real construction and information management problems
• Understand the importance of data quality, explainability, security, permissions and governance when shaping AI-enabled product capabilities

Cross‑Product & Integration Awareness

• Develop awareness of:
• Product integrations
• Data flows across platforms
• Inter‑product dependencies
• Identify potential integration impacts of new features
• Support consistency and reuse across products where possible

Governance, Reporting, Planning & Stakeholder Management

• Provide clear, structured updates on:
• Backlog health
• Delivery progress
• Risks and trade‑offs
• Create and maintain clear delivery plans, release plans, prioritisation rationale, decision logs, dependency maps and RAID-style reporting where required
• Prepare materials for:
• Product reviews
• Client sessions
• Internal governance forums
• Work closely with:
• Strategic Product Director (primary escalation, strategic alignment and decision authority)
• CPTO (technical oversight)

Skills & Attributes:

Essential

• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills
• Clear and strong written and verbal communication in English
• Confidence presenting to stakeholders and clients
• High learning agility and resilience
• Comfort working with remote, distributed teams
• Product Qualification
• 5+ years’ experience in SaaS product ownership, product management, business analysis or agile product delivery, ideally within construction technology, engineering, infrastructure, information management, CDE, BIM or project delivery software
• Proven ability to write detailed feature requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria and release-ready documentation in excellent written English
• Strong working knowledge of Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps or similar tools for backlog management, sprint planning, issue tracking and delivery reporting
• Experience working with Product Managers and contributing to roadmap planning, GTM readiness, product marketing input and product performance reporting
• Confident client-facing communicator with excellent spoken English, able to facilitate workshops, manage challenging conversations and present product decisions clearly
• Highly organised planner who can manage competing priorities, ambiguity, pressure, stakeholders and deadlines without losing delivery discipline
• Exposure to AI-enabled products, data-led product development, workflow automation or intelligent SaaS features is highly desirable