Group Product Manager Digital Lending

Job description

At OakNorth, we’re on a mission to empower the UK’s most ambitious businesses. Since 2015, we’ve lent over $18 billion across the UK and US, helped create more than 58,000 new homes and 36,000 new jobs, and supported hundreds of thousands of personal savers — all while fuelling the UK economy.

The Role 👋

OakNorth is looking for a Group Product Manager to lead the strategy and delivery of the digital transformation of credit analysis within loan underwriting, as part of the Digital Lending programme in the Lending business unit.

This is a senior product leadership role, reporting into the Director of Lending Product, with line management responsibility for a number of senior and mid-level Product Leads. You will be accountable for shaping the vision, roadmap, and outcomes for how credit analysis is performed, supported, and scaled through technology at OakNorth.

Credit analysis is at the core of OakNorth’s lending proposition—and one of the most complex, specialist, and high-stakes areas of the business. This role exists to fundamentally change how credit decisions are supported, not just by delivering software, but by embedding new ways of working, new capabilities, and new levels of confidence across the Credit Analyst function.

You will lead a transformation that balances deep credit expertise, regulatory expectations, and operational reality with what best-in-class digital credit analysis looks like today—and what it needs to become tomorrow.

What we’re looking for 👀

• Product strategy for digital credit analysis
• Own the end-to-end product strategy for the digitisation of credit analysis within loan underwriting.
• Define a clear, credible vision for how technology should support better, faster, and more consistent credit decisions—grounded in real-world delivery experience.
• Translate OakNorth’s lending strategy, risk appetite, and regulatory constraints into a coherent product roadmap with clear outcomes.
• Continuously assess what “best in class” looks like in digital credit analysis and underwriting—and ensure OakNorth is moving decisively in that direction.
• Delivery of meaningful, adopted change
• Lead the delivery of complex product initiatives that materially change how credit analysis is performed day to day.
• Ensure solutions are not only built and shipped, but successfully adopted, embedded, and trusted by Credit Analysts and wider lending teams.
• Balance innovation with pragmatism—knowing when to push for step-change improvement and when incremental progress is the right path.
• Take accountability for outcomes, not just outputs, including efficiency, quality, consistency, and user confidence.
• Deep partnership with Credit, Risk, and Lending stakeholders
• Act as the senior product partner to the Credit Analyst function—an expert, demanding, and high-credibility stakeholder group.
• Build strong, trust-based relationships with Credit, Risk, Operations, Engineering, Data, and Compliance leaders.
• Navigate challenge and resistance constructively, using evidence, delivery track record, and clarity of vision to drive alignment.
• Ensure product decisions are well-informed by credit expertise without being captured by legacy ways of working.
• Product leadership and team management
• Line manage and develop a team of senior and mid-level Product Leads, setting clear expectations, priorities, and accountability.
• Coach product leaders to operate effectively in complex, regulated, expert-driven domains.
• Establish strong product management standards across discovery, prioritisation, delivery, and measurement.
• Ensure teams are focused on the highest-impact problems, with clear success metrics and ownership.
• Discovery, decision-making, and prioritisation
• Ensure discovery is purposeful, decision-led, and proportionate to risk and complexity.
• Use a combination of qualitative insight, quantitative data, and domain expertise to inform prioritisation and trade-offs.
• Make—and stand behind—hard decisions, including stopping, simplifying, or reshaping work that does not deliver sufficient value.
• Maintain a relentless focus on solving the right problems, not just delivering requested features.
• Technology, data, and AI in credit analysis
• Lead the application of data, automation, and AI to improve credit analysis quality, consistency, and efficiency.
• Ensure emerging technologies are applied responsibly, transparently, and within regulatory and model-risk constraints.
• Work closely with Engineering and Data teams to ensure solutions are scalable, explainable, and operationally robust.
• Anchor innovation to real improvements in analyst decision-making and confidence—not novelty.

What success looks like 🏆

• Credit Analysts can complete high-quality analysis more efficiently, with better tooling, clearer information, and stronger decision support.
• Digital credit analysis capabilities are actively used, trusted, and embedded in day-to-day underwriting.
• Product teams are delivering consistently against a clear strategy, with strong alignment across Credit, Risk, and Technology.
• Stakeholders see product as a driver of change and improvement, not just a delivery function.
• The Digital Lending roadmap is credible, outcome-focused, and demonstrably improving lending performance.
• Product leaders in the team are stronger, more confident, and operating with greater autonomy and impact.

About you 🫵

• Have personally led the digitisation of credit analysis, underwriting, or decision support in a bank, fintech, or leading-edge lending organisation.
• Understand what best-in-class digital credit analysis looks like—and have delivered it in practice, not just in theory.
• Are comfortable operating in high-challenge environments with strong opinions, deep expertise, and real risk.
• Can set a bold product vision and also get into the detail when credibility and delivery require it.
• Have led and developed other product managers, creating clarity, accountability, and momentum.
• Are outcomes-driven, resilient, and highly self-motivated.
• Know that real transformation is as much about adoption and behaviour change as it is about technology.
• Can influence senior stakeholders through clarity, evidence, and delivery track record—and are willing to challenge constructively when needed.

What makes working here better 😍

• This is a truly hybrid role, offering engineers and product the flexibility to work from home while also providing opportunities to collaborate in person with the team when it adds value. There’s no fixed requirement for days in the office, instead, we focus on creating space for engineers & product to engage meaningfully, whether that’s in-person for whiteboarding sessions or remote for deep focus work.
• Work-life balance 🌴 - 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) each year, and enhanced family leave allowances.
• Competitive salary & equity 🏦 - We want people to have a serious stake in the business.
• Good kit 💻 - Your choice of the best laptop, running macOS or Ubuntu.
• Team socials 🎉 - The opportunity to get to know each other outside of work.
• Company socials 🥡 - A chance to catch up and meet new colleagues weekly over informal office breakfasts and dinners on OakNorth - or at our free barista bar every day.
• Commuter support 🚲 - We offer the cycle to work & EV scheme.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.