Senior Principal - Product Owner Network Capabilities

Business Introduction
GSK remains committed to achieving bold commercial ambitions for the future. By 2031, we aim to deliver £40 billion in annual sales, leveraging our existing strong performance momentum to significantly increase our positive impact on the health of billions of patients globally. Our Ahead Together strategy is centred on early intervention to prevent and alter the course of disease, thereby protecting people and supporting healthcare systems.
Our diverse portfolio consists of vaccines, specialty medicines, and general medicines.
Through continuous innovation and a dedicated focus on scientific and technical excellence, we strive to develop and launch new, groundbreaking treatments that address critical health challenges.

Job Purpose

The Product Owner owns the backlog and roadmap for GSK’s network capabilities such as DNS, DHCP and IP address management product, translating what GSK teams need into prioritised work and maximising the value the platform delivers to the teams that consume it. The role works daily with engineering to deliver increments and accept completed work, links every backlog item to strategy and OKRs, and measures adoption and outcome rather than output.

The role sits inside the platform team and holds genuine product decision rights over backlog order and acceptance. Platform strategy and the multi-year roadmap sit with the Platform Manager, domain demand and sequencing sit with the Domain Portfolio Manager, technical design and standards sit with the Platform Architect, and the reliability bar sits with Reliability Engineering.

Key Responsibilities

•        Own and prioritise the product backlog by value, risk and reliability, applying lean portfolio principles rather than fixed project plans.

•        Link every backlog item explicitly to GSK D&T strategy and domain OKRs, and measure the outcome with a named metric.

•        Translate consumer needs and business outcomes into clear requirements and user stories that engineering can act on without further interpretation.

•        Work daily with the engineering team through refinement, planning and review, and accept completed increments against agreed criteria.

•        Balance new capability against the reliability bar, agreeing SLOs and error budget impact with Reliability Engineering before committing to work.

•        Use AI tooling to accelerate discovery, backlog refinement and requirement drafting, and record where AI-assisted output has been reviewed before acceptance.

•        Measure product adoption, self-service uptake and value delivered, and iterate the roadmap on that evidence rather than on stakeholder volume.

•        Steer delivery with flow metrics such as throughput, cycle time and work in progress, and act on them rather than reporting them.

•        Manage consumer demand and stakeholder expectations, saying no with a reason where an item does not compete on value.

•        Manage supplier-delivered components within the product, holding partners to the same acceptance criteria and reliability standards as internal work.

•        Contribute the product view into the domain roadmap held by the Platform Manager and the portfolio view held by the Domain Portfolio Manager.

•        Hold the boundaries with the Platform Manager on platform strategy, the Platform Architect on technical design and standards, and Reliability Engineering on the reliability bar.

Professional Qualifications

•        Degree in a technology, engineering or business discipline, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering).

•        Agile or product certifications desirable (e.g., Certified Scrum Product Owner, SAFe Product Owner / Product Manager).

Area of Specialisation

•        Product ownership in a platform or agile environment, covering backlog management, prioritisation and increment acceptance.

•        Outcome measurement, covering OKRs, adoption metrics and flow metrics used to steer delivery.

Experience Required

•        Overall 15 years and typically 5 or more years in product ownership or product management, including at least two years owning a backlog in a platform or infrastructure context.

•        Practical experience of lean or agile backlog management, including prioritisation by value and risk rather than by request order.

•        Track record of translating business needs into requirements that…