AI Product Development Manager

Fletchers Solicitors; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 80,000

Job description

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Role: AI Product Development Manager - Fletchers Solicitors

Location: Hybrid - expect remote with three to five days per month in offices in Manchester/Liverpool

Fletchers Solicitors Ltd have a fantastic opportunity to join our growing Team.

We're looking for a Product Development Manager to join the AI team at Fletchers to support the internal development and delivery of AI tools into the business, and eventually to help take these to the wider industry. Since the team is small and growing, this person will have a range of responsibilities with the potential to grow the role over time. You'll be working alongside our existing Product Development Manager but with your own projects and products to develop and deliver. In the near-term, you will be focussed on planning, managing, and driving the deployment of our first set of tools into the business; ensuring they work effectively, refining the technical elements, and working with the relevant front-line teams of lawyers and nurses to make sure they deliver on our business objectives and improve our performance.

In addition, you will support the 'discovery' element of product development, by working with senior stakeholders, front-line users, and the technical team to build and test proof of concept (PoC) for the next wave of products. Your role in this will span the whole product lifecycle: from process analysis and ideation; through technical and UI design; to delivery, training, & implementation. Our approach is to be 'delivery-focused', meaning that as soon as we have confidence that a PoC is working to some degree, we will consider how we can roll this out to more users, get more feedback, and improve it more quickly.

This is primarily a business focused role; however, it will be important to have a strong grasp of the technical aspects of the products we are building (and to have a sense of what AI can do in the industry). This will be critical to determine what we should focus on, to communicate effectively with our legal colleagues and front-line users, and to guide our data science and engineering teams in their development work. You will also need strong analytical and problem-solving skills, to make sense of complex and unstructured data relating to our processes and product trials, and to be able to calculate the financial value these products could have for our business and the wider industry. You will then be responsible for driving the adoption, feedback collection, and improvement of our tools, which will require a hands-on change management effort and face-to-face collaboration with our colleagues and end users.

We think the ideal candidate will be self-driven and good at getting things done, have strong problem-solving skills, be able to communicate effectively with a broad range of people, and like coming up with innovative solutions to business problems. They will be happy challenging existing processes and the status quo, and enthusiastic about the change technology can bring to people's lives. Since we're a small team with a big vision, they will also need to be a self-starter, and have a strong sense of ownership over the work they do. It would be desirable but not essential to have experience of working in a consultancy environment, working in collaboration with clients to meet their needs, solving technical problems, and managing stakeholder relationships.

In return Fletchers can offer:

• 35 hours working week
• Bonus scheme (subject to targets being met)
• 35 days holiday a year including bank holidays and Christmas Closure, you also have an option to purchase up to 3 extra days' holiday per year, until you reach the maximum long service awards which are awarded after your 5th, 7th, and 9th full year of employment
• Pension scheme with tax-efficient salary sacrifice option
• Life Assurance Policy
• Medicash policy to cover some dental, optical and other medical expenses
• Company sick pay
• Enhanced Maternity, Paternity and IVF schemes
• Flexible, agile working environment with a positive work-life balance
• Varied calendar of funded company social events
• Monthly voucher awards for winning nominees

Essential Skills and Experience:

• 2.1 or above in a Bachelor's degree or higher, in a STEM-related subject
• 2+ years of professional experience, in a role where you can demonstrate stakeholder management & working through others (for example: product management, consultancy)
• Strong numerical and analytical skills
• Familiarity with and passion for ML and AI technologies, including business applications and strategy
• Confidence in self-driven data analysis & problem solving to understand problems without close direction
• Evidence of leading and delivering change in people-based processes, including effective management of relationships with stakeholders and with people at all levels in an organisation
• Willingness to travel to Manchester or Liverpool for whole-team meetings and to spend time side-by-side with our internal teams and end users (nurses, solicitors, call centre agents)
• UK based and full rights to work in the UK
• Desirable would be to have some experience in coding or software design, or working with or adjacent to a software development team (although this would be secondary to the change management and people-process management parts of the role)

We reserve the right to close this role before the date specified depending on the calibre and volume of candidates.

A bit about Fletchers Solicitors & the Data Science team:

Fletchers is a rapidly growing law firm specialising in personal injury and clinical negligence law. Over the last three years, we have had a small but successful data science project developing and implementing a decision-support neural network, and over the last 9 months have invested heavily in our data science and AI capability, to build an entirely new AI team. This small but growing team has the goal of developing and deploying a range of ML tools within our firm, and then to commercialise these for the wider industry in the near future. AI is a top priority for the wider business, so we're running the team as a mix of a 'priority project' and an internal start-up, reporting directly to the group CEO. We've initially focussed on two core products, which use in-house expertise and databases to develop custom ML models, and then are building LLM applications on top. These tools have passed the Proof of Concept phase and are both are being rolled out to the appropriate department in full over the summer. We're now building on these as well as exploring the next phase of products, which will include supporting or automating legal tasks, and decision-support systems.

Fletchers is based in the North-West of the UK, with offices in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Southport, Bolton, and Cambridge, although many of our colleagues often work from home. Our existing AI & Data Science team is spread across Cambridge, London, Manchester & Liverpool, and we currently meet around once per month in Manchester.

Since we're a small and new team, whoever joins us in this role will have ample opportunity to influence the team, in both the direction of all our projects, as well as the development of the team, the work culture and dynamic.