Associate Product Owner About The Role We are looking for a proactive, curious, and people-focused Associate Product Owner to join our product team. You will support the end-to-end product lifecycle, working closely with engineering, design, data, and business stakeholders to help shape and deliver valuable features that solve real user problems. This role is ideal for someone who has some experience working with digital products and wants to continue building strong product ownership skills in a supportive, collaborative team. Main Duties & Responsibilities Product Delivery Support the Product Owner in translating customer problems into clear user stories and acceptance criteria. Assist with backlog refinement, sprint planning, and maintaining prioritised, high-quality work items. Collaborate with engineering squads to ensure shared understanding and smooth delivery. Stakeholder Management Build strong relationships across squads and business teams. Communicate updates, gather feedback, and help align stakeholders around product outcomes. Analysis & Insight Use data to identify opportunities, understand feature performance, and support decision-making. Contribute to discovery work such as competitor analysis, customer research, and problem validation. Product Lifecycle Support Contribute to requirement gathering, solution exploration, delivery, release planning, and iteration cycles. Help ensure products are aligned with strategy, customer needs, and commercial goals. About You Essential Experience of project or change management. Understanding of product and technology. Ability to prioritise tasks and workload. Strong analytical ability, comfortable working with data to support decisions. Excellent communication and collaboration skills. Stakeholder management experience. Desirable Some experience working with product development or delivery teams (e.g., product management, business analysis, project coordination). Understanding of product lifecycle concepts. Experience with backlog management tools (e.g., Jira, Azure DevOps, Trello). Basic understanding of the software development lifecycle. Exposure to Agile ceremonies or frameworks. Understanding of UX principles or user-centred design. Familiarity with metrics/analytics tools. Personal Qualities Curious, proactive, and always looking to learn. Comfortable with ambiguity and open-ended problem spaces. Self-driven with a strong sense of ownership. Positive approach and ability to connect well with others. Enjoys working collaboratively across multiple teams. What's In It For You? Hybrid working post-training (3 days a week in office, 2 day at home) 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays, this increases with your service Refer and Earn - Employee referral scheme and bonuses Family Friendly - Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Pay and gift hampers for new parents Employee Experiences - Social events and regular engagement activities, such as Christmas and Summer parties, in office events and competitions and long service awards. Activities for key inclusion events and wellbeing webinars. Internal employee recognition schemes such as employee of the month and end of year awards Training & Development Opportunities - A huge range of internal and external training available, including apprenticeships (levels 3,4 & 5) ESG & Sustainability - Cycle to work scheme, volunteering days, travel discounts and part of Manchester Liftshare Community platform Exclusive access to Westfield Health access to different healthcare benefits and services, giving you money back towards essential health costs such as optical and dental treatments. Also included - 24hr DoctorLine service, Gym Discounts, offers on a wide range of goods and services from hundreds of leading retailers, restaurants, and destinations. Mental health and Wellbeing Support - Employee Assistance Program providing up to 6 sessions of structured counselling and access to a variety of wellbeing resources including webinars, Health Checks, and podcasts. Access to mental health first aiders and much more Free breakfast, fresh fruit and tea & coffee provided daily About Dals At Dals, we enable people and organisations to tackle critical language challenges every day. Our interpreting and translation services cover more than 500 languages, including BSL and other non-spoken languages. We connect clients and their service users with crucial expertise whenever and wherever they need it—because the world is a better, fairer place when everyone is understood. Our people are our future, and we take care of them. Through community partnerships and social value initiatives, we continuously work to ensure Dals has a positive impact on the world. Our Commitments We are proud to be: An Age Friendly Employer, welcoming applications from experienced professionals and supporting age diversity. A supporter of the Armed Forces Covenant, encouraging applications from veterans, reservists, and their families. A Disability Confident Employer, guaranteeing interviews for disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria and ensuring an inclusive recruitment process. A Mindful Employer, promoting mental health awareness and fair recruitment practices in line with the Equality Act 2010. Applicants must be UK residents and have permission to work in the UK. A basic DBS check is required for this role.