Associate Director, IT, Technical Product Owner - AI program

We are seeking a skilled and experienced Technical Product Owner (TPO) to help deliver a pragmatic, business-driven AI Program focused on deploying safe, traceable and reusable AI agents alongside core operations.

AI will assist, not replace with human-in-the-loop controls, auditability, and strong governance. The initial focus is on document-heavy, high-volume operational processes where automation can reduce manual effort while maintaining oversight, quality, and compliance.

This role will drive the AI Product Squad and will work alongside AI engineers and scientists who lead the specialist AI components. As TPO, you will be accountable for the end-to-end product delivery: shaping the backlog into buildable scope, coordinating dependencies and integrations, embedding governance and controls, and ensuring predictable execution through UAT and Production. You will partner closely with the AI specialists to translate AI capabilities into usable, operationally-ready product outcomes.

You Will:

• Own delivery outcomes: drive predictable execution from discovery through UAT and Production, ensuring commitments are met and releases are operationally ready.
• Own the backlog (business + technical): prioritise features, platform enablers, governance controls, tech debt, and support readiness; keep work “ready” through ongoing refinement.
• Translate needs into buildable scope: write clear epics/stories and acceptance criteria; define validation approach, thresholds, failure modes, and human approval points.
• Manage dependencies & integrations: coordinate cross-team dependencies (data, APIs, entitlements, workflow integration), remove blockers, and escalate decisions early.
• Oversee quality, compliance & release governance: embed testing and non-functional requirements; lead release readiness so deployments are safe, repeatable, and supportable.
• Operational readiness & L3 support: ensure monitoring/runbooks/incident pathways are in place; partner with L2/Application Management and engineering to resolve incidents and prevent recurrence.
• Observability & continuous improvement: use delivery and service metrics to steer prioritisation and improve reliability, controls, and user outcomes.
• Stakeholder alignment: act as the technical voice with stakeholders, providing clear updates on progress, risks, options and decisions.

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