Product Owner - Core Branch Technology

Product Owner- Core Branch Platform

• Contract duration: 3 months
• Location: 2 days per week in Central London or Chesterfield
• Start date: ASAP
• Pay range: £600.00- £650.00 per day/Inside IR35

We are looking for an experienced Product Owner to join our client and own the strategy, roadmap and evolution of the core enterprise platform supporting a replacement programme. This role will help move the organisation from Legacy branch systems to an SAP-centred platform and architecture, bringing together reconciliation, accounting, integration and orchestration capabilities across a complex landscape.

This is not a traditional digital Product Owner role focused on agile ceremonies or day-to-day squad management. The successful candidate will take an outcome-led approach to platform ownership, ensuring the right capabilities and integrations are in place so that the organisation, suppliers and branches are paid correctly.

Key responsibilities:

• Own and communicate the product strategy, roadmap and life cycle for the Core Branch platform.
• Shape the evolution of the platform as part of the wider replacement programme.
• Oversee capabilities for reconciliation, accounting, transaction processing, integration and orchestration.
• Ensure effective integration across SAP, supplier products, APIs and other replacement systems.
• Work with business and technology stakeholders to define the right outcomes, prioritise work and articulate the value of proposed investment.
• Help establish the right delivery approach across multiple workstreams, suppliers and technical dependencies.
• Support solution discovery and design, ensuring the target architecture enables successful replacement of Legacy branch systems.
• Drive value realisation and life cycle management for a strategically important enterprise platform.
• Challenge suppliers and internal teams constructively where proposed solutions do not deliver the required outcome.
• Build strong working relationships with finance directors, architects, retail operations teams, business teams and delivery partners.

Essential experience and knowledge:

• Significant experience owning a core enterprise platform, processing platform or business-critical enterprise application.
• Strong Product Owner capability, including product strategy, roadmap development, prioritisation, value definition and outcome ownership.
• Experience of complex systems integration across multiple products, platforms and third-party suppliers.
• Knowledge of financial transaction processing, such as payment flows, settlement, reconciliation, card payments, cash management or settlement engines.
• Experience working on a large transformation programme or Legacy-system replacement.
• Ability to operate across business, architecture, operations and supplier teams in a complex delivery environment.
• Experience using APIs and integration services to support third-party products and end-to-end customer and payment journeys.
• Strong stakeholder management and the confidence to question assumptions, challenge decisions and influence senior stakeholders.
• Hands-on, proactive and willing to get into the detail.
• Curious and unafraid to ask questions or challenge established thinking.
• Outcome-led, with a clear focus on business value rather than outputs alone.
• Comfortable working through ambiguity and coordinating across multiple workstreams and moving parts.
• A credible communicator who can connect technical, operational and commercial perspectives.
• Able to hit the ground running and establish direction quickly in a fast-moving transformation environment.

Desirable experience

• Experience of SAP within an enterprise platform or integration environment.
• Knowledge of SAP Business Technology Platform and its integration capabilities.
• SAP S/4HANA knowledge or experience, particularly in an organisation moving from ECC to S/4HANA.
• Experience in retail or another environment involving complex supplier products and transaction flows.
• Familiarity with SAP-centred architecture and platform modernisation.