Change your career, change lives
The Open University is the UK’s largest university, a world leader in flexible part-time education combining a mission to widen access to higher education with research excellence, transforming lives through education. Find out more about us and our mission by watching this short video (you will be taken to YouTube by clicking this link).
We’re reimagining tuition services at The Open University to make them smarter, simpler, and more effective. The aim is clear:
- Reduce the operational burden on staff by cutting out manual tasks.
- Streamline workload planning with better tools and data.
- Introduce smart automation to save time and reduce errors.
- Build trust in data by improving consistency and reliability.
- Provide clear guidance, roles, and processes so that staff and students benefit from more consistent ways of working.
This is a transformative project that will shape how we deliver tuition services in the future, improving the experience for staff and students alike.
About the Role
As Senior Product Manager, you’ll be responsible for turning this ambition into reality. You’ll own the vision, roadmap and delivery of tuition services within the project, working at the intersection of digital, data, and operations.
You’ll collaborate with a multi-disciplinary team of designers, engineers, analysts, and service colleagues. Your job will be to ensure that what we build is user-centric, efficient, and delivers measurable impact.
You’ll be hands-on: shaping the backlog, setting KPIs, running discovery, iterating based on feedback, and building trust with stakeholders at every level. You’ll also play a key role in embedding the new services into day-to-day practice through clear communication, training and change support.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the vision and roadmap for the Tuition Services Project, aligning it to institutional priorities and the broader student support strategy.
- Champion user-centred design by developing an understanding of staff and student needs, ensuring services reduce manual processes and provide clarity of roles, responsibilities, and guidance.
- Streamline workload planning by delivering digital tools and services that allow better forecasting, scheduling, and resource management.
- Introduce smart automation that reduces repetitive and manual tasks, freeing up staff time for higher-value activities.
- Improve trust in data by ensuring systems are integrated, consistent, and reliable, with clear governance of data inputs and outputs.
- Provide consistent ways of working by embedding clear policies, processes, and guidance within services.
- Develop and maintain a prioritised backlog, balancing delivery of short-term improvements with strategic outcomes.
- Set measurable goals and KPIs for the product, ensuring delivery against benefits and reporting progress to senior stakeholders.
- Facilitate collaboration across multidisciplinary teams (service design, content, technical, data, and operations) to deliver coherent and effective solutions.
- Manage and influence stakeholders, including senior academic and operational leaders, to secure buy-in, resolve conflicts, and ensure adoption.
- Support change management and adoption, ensuring services are effectively embedded in operational practice and supported by clear communications and training.
- Promote continuous improvement, iterating on feedback and data to enhance product performance.
About You
Essential:
- Proven experience in product management, ideally in complex service environments (education, public sector, or similar).
- Strong understanding of process simplification, automation, and workflow design.
- Ability to use qualitative and quantitative data to inform prioritisation and decision-making.
- Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, particularly in environments with competing priorities.
- Strong knowledge of Agile methodologies and the ability to adapt practices to deliver effective outcomes.
- Experience in defining KPIs, benefits realisation plans, and data-driven reporting.
- Ability to articulate and communicate a product vision that motivates teams and aligns stakeholders.
- Demonstrable experience in service design and user research, embedding user needs into product decisions.
- Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills.
Desirable:
- Experience working on projects involving automation, intelligent systems, or AI-driven processes.
- Knowledge of higher education operations or large-scale service delivery.
- Familiarity with change management and embedding new processes in complex organisations.
- Understanding of data governance, integration, and trust frameworks.
- Previous experience reducing operational burden through digital services or workflow redesign.
Support with your application
If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.
What's in it for you?
At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).
Flexible working
We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.
It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be approximately once per week.
Next steps in the Recruitment process
We anticipate that we will be conducting a two-stage interview process for this role. We expect that first-stage interviews will be taking place online via Microsoft Teams during the week commencing 1 December 2025 followed by second-stage face-to-face interviews taking place on-site at our Milton Keynes in mid-December.
Early closing date notification
We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.
How to apply
To apply for this role please submit the following documents:
- CV
- A personal statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the essential requirments for this role as detailed in the job description.
You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.
