Product Technical Lead

This is a specialist and influential role where you’ll take technical ownership of how our savings and mortgage products are designed, configured, tested, launched and maintained across our technology estate. You’ll work across core banking, digital, mortgage origination and data platforms, ensuring our products are delivered accurately, efficiently and with strong controls in place.

As the Society’s technical subject matter expert for product platforms, you’ll work closely with colleagues across Product, IT, Operations, Risk and Data, as well as third-party technology providers. You’ll help shape new propositions from an early stage by assessing technical feasibility, system dependencies, delivery effort, cost and risk.

You’ll own and continuously improve our product build and governance framework, product blueprints, technical documentation and product-platform roadmap. You’ll also lead complex technical investigations, support defect resolution and identify opportunities to improve delivery through automation, reusable configuration and emerging technology.

This role would suit someone who combines strong knowledge of savings or mortgage products with hands-on technical experience. You’ll need to be comfortable working at both a strategic and detailed level, moving confidently between roadmap planning, technical design, system configuration, testing, governance and issue resolution.

We’re looking for someone who can bring strong technical product knowledge alongside the ability to influence, challenge and work collaboratively across the business.

Essential experience and skills include:

• Significant experience configuring, testing, maintaining or technically owning savings or mortgage products within core banking, mortgage origination, digital or connected data platforms.
• Strong knowledge of how savings or mortgage products are structured, calculated, configured and maintained within financial services systems.
• Proven experience managing the end-to-end product build and release lifecycle, including testing, quality assurance, change control, launch readiness and post-launch validation.
• Experience translating complex product, customer, operational and regulatory requirements into technical system requirements and solutions.
• Experience working across integrated technology platforms and understanding the impact changes can have on customer journeys, calculations, interfaces, data, reporting, operations and controls.
• Experience assessing technical feasibility, system dependencies, constraints, delivery effort and risk.
• Experience owning or significantly contributing to a product-platform roadmap and prioritised backlog.
• Proven experience investigating complex technical issues, resolving defects and completing root-cause analysis.
• Experience working with and managing third-party technology suppliers.
• Strong understanding of product governance, testing, change control, configuration management and risk controls within a regulated environment.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with excellent attention to detail.
• The ability to explain complex technical information clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong influencing and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to provide technical leadership across different teams.
• A relevant qualification or equivalent practical experience in product management, business analysis, technology, software testing, change delivery or agile product ownership.

Desirable experience includes:

• Experience within a building society, bank, mortgage lender, savings provider or financial services technology company.
• Experience with Summit/SBS, Activate, Frontline, Finova MSO or Fintilect Interact, or comparable platforms.
• Experience delivering platform migration, modernisation or significant product-enabling change.
• BCS Business Analysis, Agile Product Owner, Scrum Product Owner, testing, change management, project delivery or financial services qualifications.
• Experience using automation or AI-assisted approaches to product build and testing.
• SQL, Power BI or similar data interrogation and reporting skills.
• Knowledge of modern core banking, SaaS platforms, configurable product engines and API-led integration

As our Product Technical Lead, you’ll be responsible for:

• Taking technical ownership of how our savings and mortgage products are built, configured, maintained and distributed across our core banking, digital, mortgage origination and data platforms.
• Managing and coordinating product builds to ensure new products and changes are delivered accurately and to agreed launch dates.
• Configuring and overseeing product features including interest rates, tiers, terms, notice periods, ISA rules, fees, charges, redemption terms and early repayment charges.
• Leading end-to-end product testing, quality assurance, change control, launch readiness and post-launch validation.
• Owning and maintaining product blueprints, technical documentation, product records and capability maps.
• Translating new product ideas and regulatory or customer requirements into clear technical requirements, system configurations, data mappings and acceptance criteria.
• Assessing technical feasibility, system dependencies, delivery effort, cost and risk to help shape propositions before development begins.
• Owning and prioritising the product-platform roadmap and backlog, balancing customer value, strategic priorities, regulatory requirements, risk and delivery capacity.
• Acting as the key Product contact for IT teams and third-party technology providers, including managing change requests, supplier roadmaps and product-related technical issues.
• Leading investigations into incidents, defects and system configuration issues, identifying root causes and ensuring effective resolution.
• Identifying opportunities to use automation, emerging technology and AI-assisted testing to improve the speed, quality and control of product delivery.
• Maintaining strong product-build governance, including appropriate controls, approvals, segregation of duties, audit trails and evidence.
• Building technical product knowledge across the Society through documentation, playbooks, training and knowledge sharing

About Us

At Darlington Building Society, we’re a people-first employer where collaboration, innovation and doing the right thing for our members and communities are at the heart of what we do.

We’re proud to be a mutual organisation, which means our decisions are focused on delivering value and positive outcomes for our members rather than external shareholders. Our values, Be Better, Be Trusted and Be Yourself, guide how we work and how we support one another.

We want our colleagues to feel able to contribute ideas, develop their careers and make a meaningful difference. If you’re looking for a specialist technical role where you can influence how products are delivered, improve platform capability and help shape the Society’s future, we’d love to hear from you.

Benefits

In return, we offer a competitive and comprehensive benefits package, including:

• Competitive salary, regularly benchmarked against the role, sector and local market.
• 10% employer pension contribution.
• Life cover equivalent to four times your annual salary.
• 25 days’ annual leave, increasing to 28 days after three years’ service.
• An additional day of annual leave for your birthday.
• An additional MyDay holiday to use as you wish.
• Enhanced family-friendly leave and special leave arrangements.
• A minimum of two volunteering days each year.
• MediCash healthcare benefits.
• Car salary sacrifice scheme

Plus many more

Please note this role requires a commitment of 3 days on site as part of our ​Hybrid working modle