Job Title: Senior Technical Product Owner
Location: Leyland, Preston
Salary: Competitive
dnata Travel Group B2B is the UK’s biggest B2B-only tour operator and comprises of flagship brand Gold Medal and three specialist brands – Pure Luxury, Cruise Plus and Incredible Journeys. We pride ourselves on our truly ‘agents-first’ approach and our strong mutually beneficial and supportive relationships with a huge range of supplier partners across the industry. We are part of the Emirates group.
We are now recruiting for a Senior Technical Product Owner who is accountable for maximising the value delivered by their team backlog across each iteration and quarterly planning cycle. The role focuses on outcomes over outputs, ensuring backlog priorities align to defined product objectives and support delivery of measurable business and customer value.
The TPO translates product direction and prioritised epics into well-defined backlog items, clear acceptance criteria and actionable delivery plans. They operate as the point of accountability for backlog quality, readiness and execution, ensuring a balanced mix of feature, functional, non-functional, BAU, technical debt and enabler work.
The TPO collaborates closely with Product Management, Delivery Management and Engineering to ensure alignment between strategy, Product Requirements Document (PRD), product roadmap and execution. They hold end-to-end responsibility for eliciting, analysing, validating, specifying, verifying and managing business requirements.
The TPO owns the team-level quarterly roadmap following QP planning, ensuring alignment to PRDs, priorities and delivery commitments, maintains focus on current and upcoming iterations, and ensures backlogs are prepared, prioritised and optimised to enable predictable and effective delivery.
Hours: Full Time 37.5 hours per week
Job Accountabilities
Value Ownership & Outcomes:
- Own the optimisation of value delivery through the team backlog
- Translate defined product outcomes into prioritised, value-driven backlog items
- Ensure backlog prioritisation reflects business value, risk, dependencies and capacity
- Define and track success measures for delivered work, enabling continuous optimisation of BAU and incremental improvements
Backlog Management & Execution:
- Own and maintain a high-quality, balanced team backlog post QP planning
- Ensure backlog prioritisation aligns with TPM-defined outcomes and roadmap direction
- Ensure backlog covers feature, functional, non-functional (NFR), BAU, technical debt, spikes and enabler work
- Maintain strong backlog readiness with clear, concise user stories and acceptance criteria
- Lead backlog refinement, grooming and 3-amigo sessions to ensure work is delivery ready
- Continuously prioritise and optimise backlog based on capacity, dependencies and emerging demand
Requirements Management & Analysis:
- Hold end-to-end accountability for eliciting, analysing, validating, specifying, verifying and managing business requirements
- Assess end-to-end impact of changes from both business and technical perspectives
- Ensure requirements are well-defined, testable and aligned to agreed outcomes and design intent
- Maintain integrity and quality of features within defined technical and team boundaries
Delivery Alignment & Governance:
- Collaborate closely with Product Management, Technical Product Management, Delivery Management and Engineering to align teams backlog to QP roadmap
- Represent the team backlog in key planning and governance forums
- Ensure Service Desk, BAU and operational demand are analysed and prioritised within team capacity
- Identify and manage dependencies and risks within the team scope, escalating where required
- Support system demos, iteration reviews and QP Inspect & Adapt sessions to demonstrate delivered value
- Represent the team backlog in key planning and governance forums, including QP Planning
Planning & Iteration Readiness:
- Own the quarterly roadmap at team level following QP planning
- Maintain focus on current and upcoming iterations, ensuring pipeline of ready work
- Prepare and sequence backlog items to enable predictable, continuous and flow based delivery
- Work with Delivery Management to balance workload across planned and unplanned demand
Continuous Improvement & Collaboration:
- Identify and prioritise improvements across BAU, service issues and delivery practices
- Contribute to TPO community of practice to improve consistency, capability and ways of working
- Capture and promote team-driven innovation ideas, aligning with wider product and TPM direction
- Drive continuous backlog and requirement quality improvement to enhance delivery efficiency
To be considered for this role, we need you to have the following skills, experience and qualifications:
- Demonstrable Agile methodology experience, preferably within a Scaled Agile Framework
- For this role you have 5+ years of proven experience working in Agile Delivery, either as a Business Analysis or Technical Product Owner
- 3 or more years travel industry experience required
- AQP schemas (XML and/or JSON)
- Business acumen and strategic thinking
- Understanding of business analysis principles, processes and techniques
- Ability to think analytically, solve problems to complex business processes, and document results
- Ability to communicate complex ideas in a clear, concise manner across functional and technical departments
- Ability to develop and prepare process models, functional specifications, and technical requirements
- The candidate must be process-oriented with sound judgment, attention to detail, accuracy, and follow-through including the flexibility to perform in an ever-changing work environment
- The candidate must be energetic, driven and committed to project success while working under tight time constraints and pressure
- The ability to perform industry research to clarify, define, or satisfy technology or business process issues
This role is based at our bright, modern office in Leyland, just 10 minutes from junctions 28 & 29 of the M6. We have some fantastic benefits, making us a great place to work:
We have some fantastic benefits, making us a great place to work:
- Travel discounts – we have a dedicated Staff Travel Team to help you plan your next adventure
- 25 days annual leave, increasing to 28 days after 5 full years of service (+ bank holidays)
- Additional annual leave purchase scheme
- Company pension scheme
- Low-cost health care for you and your family
- Employee Assistance programme
- Mental Health First Aiders
- Ongoing development – we have an in-house People Development Team
- Industry/social events – including supplier events, office socials & parties and pop-up shops
- Reward & recognition programme
- Belong programme - Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that play a crucial role in implementing our DEI strategy
- Volunteer days – one day’s paid leave each year to volunteer with a registered charity
- dnata4good – supporting the local communities we work, live and thrive in
- Free Taste Card membership– offering discounts on dining out, movies, attractions, takeaways and online shopping
- Free tea and coffee, subsidised on-site restaurant with free wifi and free car parking
