Product Development Manager
Franchise Brands
Location - Remote with travel to Macclesfield
Full time, permanent
Salary: £70,000 - £95,000 DOE + benefits
Franchise Brands is an international, multi-brand franchisor focused on building market-leading businesses, primarily through a franchise model. The Group has a combined network of more than 625 franchisees across seven brands in the UK, North America and Europe.
Our market-leading brands include Metro Rod, Metro Plumb, Willow Pumps, Filta and Pirtek in Europe. They benefit from the Group's central support services, including Franchise Support, National Sales and Account Management, Information Technology, Marketing, Finance, Recruitment and HR.
What does it entail?
We are looking for an experienced Product Development Manager to lead the technical delivery and continued development of our enterprise-scale work management platform, used by multiple clients across a range of industries.
This is a people-management role with strong technical depth. You will provide day-to-day leadership across development, analysis, testing and product disciplines, translating product and client requirements into secure, maintainable and deliverable technical outcomes.
Working closely with Product, Engineering, Project Management, Support and business stakeholders, you will guide solution design, strengthen engineering practices, remove delivery obstacles and protect the integrity of the core platform. Product and commercial awareness remain important, but the primary focus is technical leadership, engineering quality, team capability and dependable delivery.
Key responsibilities and accountabilities:
Technical Leadership & Solution Oversight
You’ll be the technical compass for the team, guiding ideas from initial requirement through to successful release and support. You’ll challenge solutions, untangle complex problems and help shape secure, scalable technology built to last. Working alongside senior developers and technical specialists, you’ll influence key decisions across architecture, integrations, data and performance, champion great engineering practices and keep technical debt firmly on the radar.
Delivery Management & Engineering Governance
You’ll keep delivery moving and the backlog healthy, turning plans into clear, achievable and testable work. Working across project and engineering teams, you’ll spot risks early, remove blockers and keep everyone sighted on progress. You’ll bring just enough process to keep things controlled without getting tangled in red tape - and ensure every release is properly tested, documented and ready for the real world.
People Leadership & Capability Development
You’ll lead a talented multidisciplinary team, giving people the clarity, coaching and confidence to do their best work. Through regular one-to-ones, mentoring and meaningful development opportunities, you’ll grow capability and encourage people to challenge ideas, solve problems together and take ownership. You’ll also help shape the team’s future through recruitment, onboarding, succession planning and smart capacity management.
Product Direction, Prioritisation & Stakeholder Collaboration
You’ll help steer the platform roadmap, balancing brilliant ideas with technical reality, commercial value and operational risk. You’ll juggle core-product improvements, client needs, technical debt and defect fixes, ensuring the right work gets attention at the right time. As the bridge between technical and non-technical teams, you’ll turn complexity into plain English, explain the trade-offs and bring practical solutions - not just problems - to the table.
About You
Essential Skills & Experience:
Desirable Skills & Experience:
What You'll Bring:
You’ll bring sound technical judgement, clear leadership and a knack for bringing order to complexity. You’ll know how to keep delivery moving without compromising quality, security or long-term maintainability, balancing customer and commercial needs with sensible technical decisions. Most importantly, you’ll be a natural collaborator who can influence different audiences, empower technical specialists and turn tricky problems into practical solutions.
What you’ll receive:
We are an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.
Metro Rod is the UK’s leading commercial, drainage, pump and tanker solutions company.
Our scale, expertise and experience allow us to take on any challenge, and we use the latest technology and techniques to carry out over 235 000 jobs each year. Safety and customer care are important cornerstones of our service, and our health and safety policies are highly evolved and compliant with the highest national accreditation standards.
We work with businesses of all sizes to keep their drains clear and flowing smoothly. Our national business customers trust us across multiple sectors, including facilities management, retail, water utilities, social housing, education, hospitality and many more. As a franchise network, we also work with local businesses and customers in the private and public sectors.
Our reactive and planned services mean we are always on hand when you need us. Our network consists of over 500 trained pump and drainage engineers who are available 24/7/365 across the UK, to support you with your pump and drainage needs.
Metro Rod is owned by Franchise Brands PLC, a group of international multi-brand franchisors with a combined network of over 450 franchisees. As such, it benefits from the management, resources and highly professional range of central support services that Franchise Brands is able to provide.
