Funding End Date 30 Jun 2029 Hours per week 37 Project Title BioFAIR Months Duration 35 Interview Date 15 Jul 2026 Flexible Options Although full-time hours are available, applications from those interested in working part-time hours are also welcomed.
Job Overview
The Lead Product Owner (LPO) is the primary advocate for the UK life science research community across the BioFAIR Commons network. This senior role ensures that the BioFAIR Technical Platform (BTP) is deeply intuitive and aligned with real-world research data journeys, enabling researchers to move seamlessly from "assay to insight". Operating from the BioFAIR Hub at the centre of the programme, the LPO works in close partnership with the Lead Architect and the Senior Technical Project Manager. They provide expert product leadership across five spokes - the Methods Commons, the Data Commons, the People Commons, the Knowledge Hub, and the Portal - empowering the teams within these spokes to create a coherent national infrastructure built around the needs of researchers and research technical professionals. The ideal person for this role combines deep user empathy with confident product judgement. They are an expert facilitator of collaborative discovery, comfortable in ambiguous, multi stakeholder settings, and able to translate complex research needs into a clear, prioritised product vision. They recognise that, in collaborative projects, product work is socio technical: the team structures and the services they deliver are two sides of the same coin. Adaptable and community minded, they mentor others generously and build a shared sense of direction across a distributed, federated environment.
Key Relationships
Distributed Consortium Partners: Provides product leadership, builds a shared vision, and aligns priorities across partner institutions, pathfinder projects, fellows and spokes.
Lead Architect & Senior Technical Project Manager: Works in close partnership at the BioFAIR Hub to align product vision, architecture, and delivery.
Spoke Teams (Data, Methods & People Commons, Knowledge Hub, Portal): Mentors and supports teams to define value streams aligned to the BioCommons mission.
Life Science Research Community: Leads discovery and feedback engagements with researchers and research technical professionals as the end users of BioFAIR services.
Stakeholders (Technical and Non Technical): Communicates complex user needs and product concepts with clarity to diverse audiences.
Key Responsibilities
- Assay to Insight Product Vision & Strategy
- Lead the creation of research ready data products, ensuring the entire lifecycle - from data generation through computational analysis to data sharing - is supported by services with maximum usability.
- Collaborate closely with the Lead Architect on socio technical design, defining service boundaries and team interaction patterns that support the fluid movement of research data, and advocating for changes to existing services that align with the overall product vision.
- Translate the "assay to insight" concept into a tangible, prioritised product roadmap.
- User Centred Discovery & Design
- Take a central role in defining user journeys, data journeys, and story maps, using collaborative discovery techniques to visualise how researchers interact with the platform and where value is created.
- Lead deep drive engagements with the life sciences community to uncover hidden needs, favouring rapid prototyping and feedback over heavy documentation.
- Establish continuous feedback loops to validate that the BTP is successfully reducing demands on researchers and improving the efficiency of research in the UK.
- Distributed Leadership & Mentorship
- Support and mentor the teams within the spokes to define their specific value streams and align them with the overall BioCommons mission.
- Act as an Agile/Lean coach for teams across partner institutions, helping them prioritise backlogs for community impact rather than just technical completion.
- Value Stream Integration & Community Engagement
- Ensure individual services and tools fit together into a seamless experience for researchers and research technical professionals, regardless of which spoke delivers them.
- Represent BioFAIR product priorities within the UK and international research communities, driving alignment with community practice.
Education & Qualifications
- Degree in a relevant discipline, or equivalent professional experience (Essential).
Specialist Knowledge & Skills
- Understanding of the FAIR Principles and their application to the life sciences, and familiarity with the research data lifecycle and life science data management (Essential).
- Expert level ability to facilitate collaborative mapping exercises (e.g., user journeys, data journeys, story maps) to define complex digital workflows (Essential).
- Strong design thinking skills: using design led, iterative approaches to solve complex problems in ambiguous, multi stakeholder settings (Essential).
- Socio technical awareness - understanding of how organisational structures and technical service boundaries interact to influence product success (Essential).
- User research and empathy - a rich understanding of the unique motivations and pain points of researchers interacting with complex data at scale (Essential).
- Platform literacy - understanding of how users interact with data and computational tools (Essential).
- Experience identifying and optimising value flow (value stream mapping) in a distributed organisation (Desirable).
- Experience using low fidelity prototypes to validate assumptions and gather feedback (Desirable).
- Significant experience in Product Ownership or User Experience Design within Agile/Lean frameworks, with a track record of delivering user facing digital services (Essential).
- Experience driving a shared product vision across multiple teams, spokes, or partner institutions (Essential).
- Experience leading discovery sessions with specialist users to uncover needs and shape services (Essential).
- Experience in the life sciences or research computing contexts (Essential).
Management and Leadership
- Commitment to inclusive, community centric leadership that prioritises open communication and consensus building (Essential).
- Proven skill in navigating complex, multi stakeholder environments to reach decisive outcomes (Essential).
- Ability to operate with autonomy and provide clarity in ambiguous, distributed settings (Essential).
- Ability to coach and mentor distributed teams in product ownership and user centricity (Desirable).
Interpersonal & Communication Skills
- Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex user needs and "assay to insight" concepts with clarity to both technical developers and non technical stakeholders (Essential).
- Collaborative, consensus building approach to problem solving (Desirable).
Additional Requirements
- Attention to detail (Essential).
- Able to present a positive image of self, BioFAIR and the Earlham Institute (Essential).
- Promotes equality and values diversity (Essential).
- Commitment to the BioFAIR culture of openness, technical excellence, collaboration and diversity (Essential).
- Able to spend an average of one day a week at the Earlham Institute (Essential).
Benefits
Salary: £71,000 - £90,000 per annum (depending on qualifications and experience).
Contract: Full time up to 30 June 2029. Part time applications welcomed.
Disability and Equal Opportunities
As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.
Applications accepted until 5 July 2026.