Product Manager – Network & Hardware Services

About the role

As a Product Manager at Kindred Group, you will lead the strategy and roadmap for Network & Hardware Services, ensuring alignment with engineering priorities and business objectives. This role involves making informed decisions about modernization and lifecycle management within a critical infrastructure environment.

You will collaborate closely with engineers and architects, translating technical recommendations into actionable investment cases. Your ability to balance demand, capacity, and cost will be essential in shaping the long-term direction of the company's infrastructure services.

Skills that matter here

• strategic planning: This role requires strong strategic planning to prioritize initiatives and align them with the overall business goals.
• commercial awareness: Understanding budgets and total cost of ownership is crucial for making informed decisions regarding vendor negotiations and investment.
• technical understanding: A solid grasp of enterprise networking and infrastructure is necessary to engage in meaningful discussions with engineering teams.

Who this role suits

• Candidates who thrive in this role will have a background in infrastructure services or complex technology environments.
• They should possess strong communication skills to convey technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• The ideal person will be confident in challenging assumptions and making tough decisions when necessary.

From the employer

What you will do

• Own the strategy and roadmap for Network & Hardware Services.
• Set priorities across modernisation, lifecycle, reliability, technical debt and new demand.
• Partner closely with the Network Engineering Line Manager to align roadmap priorities with team capacity, skills and longer-term capability needs.
• Partner with engineers and architects on technology evaluations, vendor deep-dives and proof-of-concepts.
• Turn technical recommendations into funded and sequenced decisions.
• Build investment cases for refresh and modernisation.
• Own the non-personnel budget for your portfolio.
• Shape vendor and sourcing strategy and lead commercial negotiations alongside Procurement.
• Balance demand, capacity, cost and technical priorities.
• Say no when that is the right decision.
• Clearly communicate direction and trade-offs to engineering teams and senior leadership.

What you will bring

• You understand infrastructure well enough to hold your own in a technical discussion, but you don't need to be the most technical person in the room.
• A solid understanding of enterprise networking and physical infrastructure.
• Experience with infrastructure services, technical platforms or similarly complex technology environments.
• The ability to understand and challenge technical proposals and explain their implications to non-technical leaders.
• Strong strategic planning and prioritisation skills.
• Commercial awareness across budgets, business cases, vendors and total cost of ownership.
• Credibility with engineers and the confidence to challenge assumptions constructively.
• The ability to move comfortably between engineering detail and leadership discussions.

Why join us?

• Network & Hardware Services are fundamental to our infrastructure. You'll work alongside experienced engineers and have the budget, mandate and influence to turn good technical decisions into action.
• You'll have the opportunity to shape architecture, investment, modernisation and the long-term direction of critical infrastructure services.
• We believe talent knows no boundaries. Our hiring process focuses solely on your skills, experience, and potential to contribute to our team. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and evaluate each candidate based on merit, regardless of personal characteristics as the age, gender, origin, religion, sexual orientation, neurodiversity or disability.