Main Purpose of the Job

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.
 

Main Activities & Responsibilities

Percentage

“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.

35

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-dive 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.

25

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.

20

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.

20

Education & Qualifications

Requirement

Importance

Degree in a relevant discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

Essential

Specialist Knowledge & Skills

Requirement

Importance

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.

Desirable

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

Relevant Experience

Requirement

Importance

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.

Desirable

Management and Leadership

Requirement

Importance

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

Requirement

Importance

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

Requirement

Importance

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

Earlham Institute

About the Earlham Institute
The Earlham Institute harnesses the power of data-driven biology to accelerate solutions for health, biodiversity, and food security. Based at Norwich Research Park, the Earlham Institute is one of eight institutes strategically funded by BBSRC.

Our science combines world-class technology, interdisciplinary expertise, and training and development across genomics, engineering biology and data science, to decode the scale and complexity of living systems.

We believe we can achieve more if we work together. That's why we collaborate with the global science community and industry partners, while also inspiring the next generation of scientists and technical specialists.

Our Science
Earlham Institute scientists specialise in developing and testing the latest tools and approaches needed to decode living systems and make biological predictions.

We are home to state-of-the-art facilities and technology, creating a unique combination of expertise and infrastructure.

We have dedicated laboratories for genome sequencing, single-cell analysis, engineering biology, and large-scale automation; as well as one of the largest supercomputing facilities for life science research in Europe.

Our Advanced Training team also provides access to specialised scientific training to upskill the next generation of research and technical staff.

Our Culture
Our collegiate and innovative research environment comes with significant support, including a commitment to your professional development, research and administrative assistance, and opportunities to build collaborations with scientists and industry on the Norwich Research Park, across the UK, and internationally.

We are committed to building and maintaining a workplace that treats every individual with dignity and respect. By taking an active approach to fostering inclusivity, diversity, equality and accessibility, we empower our community to achieve more.

The Institute is also home to talented technical and operational staff, whose invaluable contributions enable our science to have the maximum impact. We aim to recognise, reward, and develop all staff and students so that every individual feels able to achieve their best with us.

We work hard to nurture an engaged and positive workplace, centred on core values that include openness, technical excellence, and collaboration. We attract staff from around the world who contribute to - and benefit from - an environment that enables them to deliver world-class science alongside a supportive and social community.

For more information about working at the Earlham Institute, please click here.

Further Information:

• Our Vision and Mission
• Our Strategy
• Our Culture
• Life at Earlham Institute

Department

BioFAIR

Group Details

BioFAIR is undertaking an ambitious programme to redefine the UK’s data and service landscape for the life sciences, with a vision to create an integrated, national BioCommons that places the data, tools and services needed to answer life science questions directly at researchers’ fingertips. Funded by a £34M UKRI investment over five years, BioFAIR will deliver a step change in ‘Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable’ (FAIR) research data management, providing end-to-end FAIR data and analysis capabilities alongside support and training for UK researchers. Guided by a “reuse, don’t rebuild” philosophy, BioFAIR will need to onboard a wide range of cohesive, mature services while also providing a framework for developing new, state-of-the-art capabilities.

BioFAIR is structured around a distributed “Hub and Spokes” model. The BioFAIR Hub is responsible for coordination of the overall programme, project governance, procurement, and core service delivery. The five Spokes are the primary engines of service delivery, organised around three Commons – the Data, Methods, and People Commons – and two Capabilities, the Knowledge Hub and the BioFAIR Portal.

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Lead Product Owner (BioFAIR)

BioFAIR is undertaking an ambitious programme to redefine the UK’s data and service landscape for the life sciences — and we’re looking for someone to help us ensure we put the answers to life science questions directly at researchers’ fingertips.

Applications are invited for a Lead Product Owner to join the BioFAIR Hub, hosted at the Earlham Institute, Norwich, UK.

Background:
BioFAIR is funded by a £34M UKRI investment over five years and will deliver a step change in ‘Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable’ (FAIR) research data management, providing end-to-end FAIR data and analysis capabilities alongside support and training for UK researchers.

To achieve this mission, BioFAIR seeks to redefine the UK’s existing data and service landscape for the life sciences. Guided by a “reuse, don’t rebuild” philosophy, BioFAIR will need to onboard a wide range of mature services while also providing a framework for developing new, state-of-the-art capabilities. Our services will also need to evolve over time to meet changing community and research-infrastructure needs.

BioFAIR is structured around a distributed “Hub and Spokes” model. The BioFAIR Hub is responsible for coordination of the overall programme, project governance, procurement, and core service delivery. The five Spokes are the primary engines of service delivery, organised around three Commons – the Data, Methods, and People Commons – and two capabilities, the Knowledge Hub and the BioFAIR Portal. A clear, user-centred product vision is essential to ensure these services come together into a coherent national infrastructure. The Lead Product Owner role will be based in the BioFAIR hub.

The role:
This senior role puts the needs of the UK life science research community at the heart of a national, federated research infrastructure. Based at the BioFAIR hub and as the primary advocate for researchers across the BioFAIR Commons network, you will ensure the BioFAIR Technical Platform is intuitive, coherent, and aligned with real-world research data journeys — enabling researchers to move seamlessly from “assay to insight”. Working in close partnership with the Lead Architect and Senior Technical Project Manager, you will provide expert product leadership across the five spokes: the Data, Methods and People Commons, the Knowledge Hub, and the Portal.

The ideal candidate:
The successful candidate will bring significant experience in product ownership or user-experience design within Agile/Lean frameworks, ideally in the life sciences, alongside a track record of delivering user-facing digital services. You will be an expert facilitator of collaborative journey- and story-mapping, with a rich understanding of how researchers work with complex data at scale. You will combine design-led, iterative problem-solving with the socio-technical awareness to see how team structures and service boundaries shape product success, and you will communicate complex user needs with clarity to technical and non-technical audiences alike.

This is primarily a hybrid role, as BioFAIR partners are distributed across the UK. As this is a key leadership role in the BioFAIR Hub, the post holder would be expected to spend some time at the Earlham Institute working with other members of the BioFAIR Hub team (on average around one day per week), and some time engaging with partners and communities around the UK. The exact working patterns are flexible and we welcome applications from the right candidate irrespective of location in the UK.

Additional information:
Salary on appointment will be within the range of £71,000 – £90,000 per annum depending on qualifications and experience.

This is a full-time post for a contract up to 30 June 2029. Although full-time hours are available, applications from those interested in working part-time hours (or alternative working patterns) are also welcomed.

Interviews will be held on Wednesday 15th July.

This role meets the criteria for a visa application, and we encourage all qualified candidates to apply. Please contact the Human Resources Team if you have any questions regarding your application or visa options.

As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.

The closing date for applications will be 5 July 2026.