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 engineering teams could deliver without repeated clarification.

•        Experience working to OKRs and measuring adoption or value delivered rather than features shipped.

•        Experience steering with flow metrics and acting on delivery predictability data.

•        Experience managing stakeholders and declining requests with a defensible reason.

•        Exposure to AI tooling used for discovery, backlog refinement or requirement drafting.

•        Experience delivering network capabilities as a Product Owner or equivalent member of an Agile team.

•        Capability in Team Backlog prioritisation, story definition, acceptance criteria, Planning Interval events and iteration execution.

•        Evidence of delivering shared network capabilities that improved adoption, reliability or operational efficiency.

Desirable Requirements

•        Product Owner qualification, such as SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager or Certified Scrum Product Owner.

•        Experience with Domain Name System, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, Internet Protocol address management or network access control.

•        Experience using Jira, Azure DevOps or a similar backlog management tool.

Skills/Background

•        Decisiveness on backlog order, including the confidence to sequence against value rather than seniority of the requester.

•        Clear written communication, since requirements and acceptance criteria are the role's primary output.

•        Enough technical literacy to challenge engineering estimates and understand reliability trade-offs.

•        Comfort with data as the basis for roadmap change rather than stakeholder pressure.

•        Collaborative habit with architecture and reliability colleagues who can veto on standards grounds.

#AGTech

Skills

Automation, Automation Technology, Cloud Based Services, Computer Programming, Configuration Management (CM), Data Distribution Service (DDS), Data Management and Integration (DMI), IP Address Management (IPAM), Leadership, Load Balancers, Network Design, Operational Technology (OT), Packet Switching, Security Engineering, Security Service, Software-Defined Networking Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), System Monitors, Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI), Wireless System Design, Zero Trust Architecture

 

 

Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive. We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases – to impact health at scale.

People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we’re committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people.

Inclusion at GSK:

As an employer committed to Inclusion, we encourage you to reach out if you need any adjustments during the recruitment process.

Please contact our Recruitment Team at IN.recruitment-adjustments@gsk.com to discuss your needs.

Important notice to Employment businesses/ Agencies

GSK does not accept referrals from employment businesses and/or employment agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site. All employment businesses/agencies are required to contact GSK's commercial and general procurement/human resources department to obtain prior written authorization before referring any candidates to GSK. The obtaining of prior written authorization is a condition precedent to any agreement (verbal or written) between the employment business/ agency and GSK. In the absence of such written authorization being obtained any actions undertaken by the employment business/agency shall be deemed to have been performed without the consent or contractual agreement of GSK. GSK shall therefore not be liable for any fees arising from such actions or any fees arising from any referrals by employment businesses/agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site.

It has come to our attention that the names of GlaxoSmithKline or GSK or our group companies are being used in connection with bogus job advertisements or through unsolicited emails asking candidates to make some payments for recruitment opportunities and interview. Please be advised that such advertisements and emails are not connected with the GlaxoSmithKline group in any way.

GlaxoSmithKline does not charge any fee whatsoever for recruitment process. Please do not make payments to any individuals / entities in connection with recruitment with any GlaxoSmithKline (or GSK) group company at any worldwide location. Even if they claim that the money is refundable.

If you come across unsolicited email from email addresses not ending in gsk.com or job advertisements which state that you should contact an email address that does not end in “gsk.com”, you should disregard the same and inform us by emailing askus@gsk.com, so that we can confirm to you if the job is genuine.