Senior Manager Digital Product Specialist

Digital Product Specialist has end-to-end responsibility for developing, managing, harmonizing, and phasing out commercial products, services, channel formulas, and processes within one or more segments. They aim to achieve an optimal customer experience.

This role involves a broad specialization regarding the product, channel, or market, with end-to-end responsibility for the squad's activities. The Customer Journey expert works within Mashreq's Digital Studio, collaborating with other experts to fulfill the squad's mission. They possess expertise in marketing, product management, channel, and process optimization, and can serve as Proxy Product Owner within a squad. Each squad has one product owner and one proxy product owner, responsible for defining stories and prioritizing the team backlog to align with program priorities while maintaining the integrity of features or components.

Key Result Areas

1. Applying profound product/service knowledge to develop and maintain attractive, compliant value propositions and ensure delivery excellence for customers.
2. Managing, harmonizing, and phasing out customer processes related to products, services, and sales.
3. Handling urgent incidents and identifying improvement needs.
4. Proposing and implementing structural work process improvements based on internal feedback.
5. Contributing technical expertise to all sprint events, including planning, refinements, retrospectives, and demos.
6. Monitoring market and competition developments, including costs, prices, market share, legislation, technological advances, and distribution methods.
7. Evaluating the development of new products/services against procurement of sub-products.
8. Initiating customer research to inform product strategies.
9. Designing strategies for products, channels, promotion, pricing, and quality aligned with Mashreq's brand policy and customer interests, aiming for an ideal customer journey.
10. Translating strategy into practical policy, formulating product, process, and channel policies compliant with legislation, regulations, and process principles focused on customer satisfaction, efficiency, and cost minimization.
11. Implementing strategies, tracking squad progress, and adjusting as needed in the role of Product Owner, prioritizing backlog items based on strategy, customer interests, and feasibility in consultation with the Digital Studio lead.
12. Monitoring planning, budget, and requirements, completing backlog items during sprints.
13. Assessing implications of margins, volumes, and market shares, setting targets prioritizing customer interests.
14. Designing, mapping, and improving Customer Journeys through CX data analysis and UX/IT landscape translation.
15. Applying marketing and communication practices to optimize digital channel and segment performance.
16. Maintaining up-to-date knowledge of the business domain, application architecture, IT landscape, and technologies, translating business needs into software solutions collaboratively with IT engineers.
17. Providing product information to internal and external stakeholders, including press, PR, regulators, suppliers, and industry groups.

Operating Environment and Relationships

• Mastering core capabilities of Customer Journey and specializing in one field of expertise.
• Developing conceptual models for problem areas and applying them effectively.
• Contributing structurally to Customer Journey craftsmanship.
• Being receptive to feedback and actively seeking coaching from experts.
• Following advanced training and certification in relevant fields.
• Typically having over 3 years of experience in Customer Journey roles.

Problem Solving

• Thinking creatively and critically to solve complex problems by breaking them down.
• Identifying solutions within available resources.

Decision-Making Authority & Responsibilities

• Making decisions on customer journeys to deliver optimal user experience.
• Prioritizing daily project/product tasks to meet timelines.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• 3-4 years of banking or related project experience, demonstrating high understanding of banking industry.
• At least 3 years experience in requirements gathering, data engineering/science, or software engineering.
• Background in engineering, technology, or UX preferred.
• Experience as a Product Manager with software products.
• Strong knowledge of the software development lifecycle and Agile methodologies.
• Leadership, negotiation, and excellent communication skills, comfortable engaging with senior leaders.
• Team-oriented, analytical, strategic, and tactical thinker with a passionate, energetic approach.