UL - Loans AVP Product Owner

Job description

Date live: 07/08/2026 Business Area: In Business BSS Area of Expertise: Product Development & Management Contract: Permanent Reference Code: JR-0000116275 Join us as a Product Owner at the heart of delivery in Barclays’ Unsecured Lending business. A key role within the Loans team, supporting the delivery of customer-led product outcomes by working closely with engineering teams in Pune and the wider UK-based Loans function. Ensures product priorities are translated into clear, well-defined delivery artefacts, enabling efficient execution while maintaining alignment to customer outcomes, commercial objectives, and regulatory expectations. **Context & Opportunity** - Aligned to UK-based Product Owners, Journey Owners and Product Managers with shared accountability for outcomes. - Co-located with engineering teams, providing exposure to platform, system and delivery design. - Opportunity to contribute to the Loans team’s wider objectives and product strategy delivery. - Opportunity to build expertise in Loans and Unsecured Lending and develop end-to-end product ownership capability. **Key Accountabilities** - Create, own and manage a prioritised product backlog aligned to agreed product outcomes and roadmap priorities - Develop clear user stories and acceptance criteria to support high-quality delivery - Collaborate closely with engineering teams to clarify requirements and support execution - Maintain alignment with UK-based Product teams ensuring delivery reflects customer, commercial and regulatory priorities - Contribute to delivery of Loans team’s broader goals and roadmap objectives To be successful as a Product Owner, you should have: **Basic/ Essential Qualifications:** - Strong communicator across business and technology teams - Collaborative and outcome-focused, with the ability to make trade-offs for optimal prioritisation - High ownership and accountability - Curious and analytical with interest in product performance and optimization - Participate actively in Agile ceremonies to support efficient delivery - Proactively identify and escalate issues, risks or delivery delays to ensure timely resolution and maintain momentum - Use data and insight to support prioritisation and continuous improvement - Ensure delivered features meet acceptance criteria and deliver intended value - Experience working in an Agile delivery environment (Product Owner, Business Analyst, or similar) - Strong backlog management, requirements definition, and user story development - Familiarity with JIRA, Confluence, and analytics platforms - Experience working with cross-functional or distributed teams - Comfortable using **AI‑enabled tools** to improve backlog quality, analysis, and documentation, while recognising accountability remains with Product **Desirable skillsets/ good to have:** - Experience in Retail Banking, Loans, or Unsecured Lending - Understanding of regulated financial services environments and customer outcome considerations - Experience in a Product Owner or product-aligned role - Comfortable working with engineering teams and understanding technical considerations, with desirable knowledge of platforms such as Loans Management systems or risk decisioning systems - Experience using SQL or similar tools to interrogate data and support decision-making - Exposure to digital delivery, Behavior-Driven Development, and Agile delivery practices **What Success Looks Like:** - Clear, prioritized backlog enabling smooth delivery . - Strong alignment between product priorities and outputs. - Effective collaboration across product and engineering teams. - High-quality delivery with minimal rework. - Consistent focus on customer experience and outcomes and business value You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as experience with supporting the delivery of customer-led product outcomes by working closely with engineering teams in Pune and the wider UK-based Loans function This role will be based out of Pune. **Purpose of the role** The purpose of a Product Owner is to maximize the value of the product by defining a clear product vision (are they setting the vision or would this align to ), managing authoring, refining and prioritizing the Product Backlog balancing trade-offs across desirability, viability and feasibility – making sure the right thing is being ‘built’, and prioritising work based on business goals. They act as the primary liaison between stakeholders and delivery teams, ensuring the product meets user/customer needs and delivers optimal value. Product Owners are responsible for developing a roadmap and driving execution of their product area/sub-journey, applying continuous improvement principles and techniques. **Accountabilities** - Ensure Product Alignment with Business Goals: Ensure that the product & its features are aligned with broader objectives, driving value and contributing to the organization’s overall strategy. Utilisation of market research, analysis of customer feedback and monitoring of industry trends to identify new products, features or enhancements. - Communicate Product Vision to Delivery Teams: Clearly articulate the product vision and goals to the delivery teams, ensuring they understand, align and are inspired to deliver the business value and purpose of each feature or user story. - Create and Refine User Stories: Write clear, concise user stories with detailed acceptance criteria, refining them as needed to ensure the development team has all the necessary information to implement features successfully. - Agile Events: Participate in key Agile events such as sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives to keep the team aligned and focused on delivering the product backlog. - Managing the Product Backlog: Responsible for creating, maintaining, and prioritising the product backlog, ensuring the highest value features are delivered first, based on business needs, custome