Principal Product Manager - Gov

About The Role Hippo Digital is recruiting for Principal Product Managers to join our growing Central Government Sector.

As a strategic product leader in the public sector, you will be instrumental in shaping portfolio visions, navigating and influencing complex policy environments, and overseeing the delivery of impactful digital services at scale.

You’ll champion strategic product direction across portfolios, empower leaders and multi-disciplinary teams, and drive the delivery of high-value outcomes for citizens.

As a Principal Consultant, specialising in Product, you’ll already be an expert in agile delivery at a strategic scale within government.

You will bring proven portfolio-level experience working across major Central Government departments, such as DWP, MoJ, DfE, MoD, and ONS. You will be a leader of leaders, coaching Senior Product Managers and advocating for user-centred design across government.

Hippo will provide exciting opportunities to represent the product function at the executive level, influence key departmental stakeholders, shape policy, and lead public sector digital transformation.

• Owning and leading the strategic direction of areas within the Hippo product community.

Leveraging your experience to develop and grow the community.

Defining and leading the overarching strategic vision, roadmap, and business models for entire product portfolios within Central Government.

Representing the product function at the executive level, shaping government policy, and advocating for product-centric changes with senior departmental leadership.

Establishing overarching strategy and objectives for a portfolio, cascading objectives from government mandates and departmental missions down to individual product goals.

Defining and implementing delivery and risk management frameworks across a portfolio, proactively mitigating strategic challenges in highly regulated environments.

Driving the improvement of organisational standards for user research, ensuring citizen needs are at the heart of all public sector product work.

Defining the data, AI, and innovation strategies for the portfolio, ensuring the ethical application of emerging technologies and strict adherence to central government standards.

Mentoring and coaching Senior leaders, fostering institutional learning and building capability across the public sector product profession.

Skills and experience that you need People are at the centre of everything we do.

We’re a diverse and close-knit community united by a love for solving complex problems for public sector clients and citizens.

We take a common sense approach to getting things done.

We get things wrong, we learn from experience and we adapt.

We stay curious and never stop learning.

We don’t need you to have specific certificates, but we do need strong strategic GDS experience and evidence of your ability to:

Translate complex public policy, external context, and emerging technology trends, including public sector AI adoption, into actionable strategic decisions and product investment areas for a government portfolio.

Architect and lead change strategies that align project delivery with long-term departmental goals, addressing underlying processes, tools, and cultural norms.

Build portfolio-level strategy and establish metrics frameworks to regularly review performance against citizen value and initiate strategic pivots based on data-driven insights.

Define and influence organisational structure, processes, and culture to enable effective cross-departmental collaboration and psychological safety.

Anticipate long-term threats and opportunities, influencing government policy and investment to embed resilience and security as foundational…