Senior Product Manager WCC621311

Job Details:

Salary range: £54,684 - £74,487 per annum. Salary negotiable depending upon experience 
Work location: Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, Westminster, SW1E 6QP
Hours per week: 36 
Contract type: Temporary up to 12 months     
Closing date: 19 June 2025

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF 809 CONNECTED BUSINESSES

Digital and Innovation in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories, where creative and enterprising people put local residents and businesses first. Creativity isn’t something that only senior managers do. In Digital and Innovation at Westminster City Council, we expect it from everyone, including our newest recruits. 

Today, Westminster is the most connected borough in London. But, when David joined us in the mid-2010s, small businesses were still struggling to get connected to fibre. Without gigabit-capable broadband, some companies even resorted to biking memory sticks around the city, simply to share files with clients.

Although still in a junior role, David took the initiative and successfully made the business case for £2.8 million of European funding to support connectivity for small businesses across Westminster. Feedback from businesses has been overwhelmingly positive as the project has enhanced their communications with clients. The new connectivity allows them to make video calls and work remotely. As the pandemic hit and many more people needed to work from home, it became clear just how vital this investment had been. 

Fast-forward a few years. Westminster is leading the way for connectivity, as a result of the project businesses are thriving, and David is heading up a service of his own responsible for delivery of the Smart City strategy.   

The Role:

As a Senior Product Manager, you can make your own contribution to Westminster’s success. This is a high-impact leadership role, driving the growth of the Connected London WiFi initiative – a product designed to improve digital connectivity for residents, businesses, and visitors across Westminster, London, and beyond. Hear it directly from Cllr Geoff Barraclough, Cabinet member of Planning & Economic Development here.

You'll play a vital role in scaling access, expanding partnerships, and delivering a compelling value proposition for wi-fi users and wi-fi operators, balancing their needs. You’ll oversee the expansion of WiFi Access Points, increasing user adoption which will both contribute to addressing data poverty, and optimising usage across diverse urban environments. Using strategic product thinking, you’ll attract more users through partner integrations and more operators by offering enhanced data insights, footfall visibility, and commercial opportunities – always balancing innovation with user needs and privacy.

In this role, you will own the vision, mission and roadmap for the product , aligning it with council-wide strategies. You’ll coordinate complex dependencies across departments, drive outcome-focused delivery, and work with multi-disciplinary hybrid teams – including user researchers, UX designers, service designers, developers, data analysts, delivery managers and product analysts – to productise the existing initiative and build ancillary data products as needed.

As a growth product leader, you’ll be responsible for defining and communicating clear goals, managing product backlogs, and overseeing roadmap delivery. You’ll translate product strategy into measurable outcomes and report on performance at senior leadership forums.

You’ll join a forward-thinking Digital & Innovation team, report into the Head of Product and Delivery and work closely with Head of Programme and Smart Delivery to shape Westminster’s evolving product culture, supporting agile ways of working, and helping to build an environment where innovation thrives. You may be required to manage Product Managers and Product Analysts, and be responsible for recruiting new talent in line with Westminster’s inclusive hiring principles. You’ll foster a strong, supportive team culture and lead by example.

Your work will contribute directly to improving outcomes for Westminster’s communities – making digital connectivity more inclusive, accessible, and impactful. This position is ideal for a visionary leader with a passion for driving growth and innovation in a dynamic urban environment.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

You are a highly experienced product leader with a proven track record of designing, delivering, and scaling digital products – ideally with a background in telecoms, WiFi, or network infrastructure. You have led multidisciplinary product teams and portfolios, managing the full product lifecycle from discovery through to large-scale delivery. With a deep understanding of agile methodologies, user-centred design, and service design, you know how to turn complex challenges into impactful, user-focused solutions.

You’ve successfully scaled products from early prototypes to mature, widely adopted services – always aligning with strategic organisational goals and user needs. 

You are confident influencing senior stakeholders and guiding them towards sound product decisions, even when that means challenging assumptions. Your thinking is always evidence-driven, backed by data and grounded in product principles. You know how to define a compelling vision, set strategic objectives, build measurable roadmaps, and translate outcomes into action.

With in-depth knowledge or interest in WiFi technology, network infrastructure, and user authentication processes, you bring technical understanding to the table alongside strategic insight. You also understand the importance of privacy, compliance, and ethics – with clear knowledge of GDPR and how it impacts digital product delivery in a public sector context.

You may already be familiar with local government or cross-government DDaT frameworks and GDS standards, and you're eager to apply that knowledge in a mission-driven environment. You’re passionate about ‘tech for good’ and motivated by the opportunity to solve complex problems that deliver real value to residents, visitors, and communities.

Above all, you are committed to fostering a strong product culture – one that champions collaboration, continuous learning, and inclusive ways of working. You’re ready to share your knowledge, mentor the next generation of product professionals, and lead by example as part of Westminster’s growing Product community. 

Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme, will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role.

The Council is committed to achieving diverse shortlists to support our desire to increase the number of staff from underrepresented groups in our workforce. We especially encourage applications from a Global Majority (GM), people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities' (formally known as B.A.M.E , Black, Asian and multiple ethnic) background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.   
 
At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit https://www.westminster.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/public-health-strategy-policies-and-reports/equality-duties  
 
As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.  
 
The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.