IBAT Product Manager
Vacancy #: 7605
Unit: Business and Nature
Organisation: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Location: Cambridge Office, Cambridge, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Reporting to: Director, Business and Nature Team
Work percentage: 100%
Grade: SP
Expected start date: 01 August 2026
Type of contract: Max-term (up to 24 months with possibility of renewal)
Closing date: 24 May 2026
BACKGROUND
The Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) is the world’s most authoritative biodiversity data platform, providing trusted data to assess biodiversity-related risks and opportunities. Launched over 16 years ago, it is an innovative solution for providing biodiversity information to decision makers while channelling critical funding into datasets and the conservation organisations that maintain them.
IBAT is the product of the IBAT Alliance - a ground-breaking collaboration between four of the world’s largest and most influential conservation organisations: the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Birdlife International, Conservation International, and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC).
IBAT integrates data from core global biodiversity datasets – the World Database on Protected Areas, the World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas, and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species – into a single portal to support decision-makers from across industry and finance. With consistent double-digit year-on-year growth of both revenue and users, IBAT now serves over 35,000 users worldwide. It is in a particular exciting stage of revamping and expanding its product in order to support greater revenue generation and double its investment into biodiversity datasets.
The IBAT Secretariat team is drawn from across the IBAT Alliance partner organisations. While this role is hosted by IUCN and will sit within IUCN’s Business and Nature Global Team, you will work full time for, and directly with the IBAT Secretariat.
IBAT is headquartered in the David Attenborough Building in central Cambridge.
JOB DESCRIPTION:
Overall Responsibility:
The Product Manager is the technical expert within the IBAT Secretariat with regards to SaaS product development best practice. A first of its kind role within the IBAT secretariat, you will be responsible for translating IBAT’s strategic commercial objectives and user-based needs into valuable product features and plan and manage the delivery of those solutions, working closely with our team of engineers, the wider IBAT team, and our partners. You will establish and embed foundational product development processes across the IBAT team from the ground up, working widely across the IBAT team and senior leadership. This includes managing the development and delivery of IBAT’s product roadmap, shaping and streamlining the agile (Scrum) production process, supporting best practice collection of insights from users, translating their needs and opportunities into work packages, and making strategic choices in managing the backlog, allocating resources and addressing risks.
The successful candidate will be technically astute, creative, and with an appetite for working within a world-class biodiversity institution. They will understand the importance of working across disciplines to find innovative solutions to global biodiversity challenges.
Main responsibilities:
• Translate commercial and organisational strategy into product strategy and implement strategy informed by product vision with cross functional support across IBAT leadership and wider team.
• Lead the development, delivery and management of the product function outputs and solutions. This includes overseeing processes, ensuring the quality of work throughout their design and implementation, and being accountable for the results. The individual sets direction, and ensures work aligns with objectives and standards.
• Responsible for cross functional line management within the IBAT team to translate the strategic commercial objectives and user-based needs into actionable product feature work package, and in future might line manages. Their work dictates where IBAT’s team of developers spend their time with significant resource and strategic implications. The position holder will be expected to raise contradictions in expectations and delivery issues and either resolve them independently, changing timelines, or supporting leadership to resolve them.
• Own and direct the development and delivery of the product roadmap, write requirements and prioritise work, driving innovation within the IBAT product based on commercial /organisational strategy.
• Execute the roadmap & maintain and prioritise the backlog by working widely with internal and external stakeholders, designers and the engineering team to deliver appropriate, well designed, features and product improvements that further the product and the IBAT Alliance.
• Manage the collection of user insights and analytics, including research, market analysis, and benchmarking across IBAT to support the appropriate parts of the product development process.
• Responsibility and significant influence over annual product development budget.
• Collect and manage customer feedback and requests, including feedback from across the IBAT partners, manage, triage and fix issues as they arise.
• Report back to stakeholders including senior leadership and staff across the IBAT Team and Secretariat on product progress and customer and market insights.
• Cultivate, manage, and maintain relationships across IBAT and dataset owners, including identifying and supporting the resolution of competing demands of the IBAT product by multiple external stakeholders.
• Constantly strive to improve delivery cadence and quality.
Other Duties:
The successful postholder may be asked to undertake other reasonable activities commensurate with the level of the post, such as representing IBAT in meetings and conferences with partners and external stakeholders.
REQUIREMENTS:
• Masters preferred or undergraduate degree and experience in a relevant field.
• Minimum 2 years product management or product owner experience in a SaaS development team, with several years product adjacent experience prior to that (such as software engineering, UX, UI, Design).
• Proven experience of managing the full product lifecycle on a modern SaaS / Cloud based application and establishing product development processes for an early-stage product, so that the candidate can do the same in IBAT with no management coming from a “product” discipline.
• Deep expertise with Agile development frameworks (e.g. SCRUM), with ability to align software technical development, science, marketing, sales, and customer success teams around a shared product vision
• Strategic insights, able to align the product roadmap with IBAT’s long-term business goals
• Ability to work independently with complete responsibility for operational excellence. Proven ability to continuously draw on and learn from industry best practice in Product Management.
• Ability to problem solve, and to iterate a product towards a valuable metric based on customer feedback and testing
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills, with meticulous attention to detail.
• Proven ability to autonomously manage positive relationships with multiple teams / external teams, often with competing demands.
• Ability to take initiative, exercise good judgment, think laterally and resolve complex issues in a dynamic and changing environment. Logical, practical and creative approach to problem solving, with a strong technical curiosity.
• Skilfully prioritizes, manages, and balances operational task flows and can identify, anticipate and address critical operational dependencies. Successfully manages competing demands and deadlines.
• Ability and willingness to learn – particularly about biodiversity, spatial and technical information – to translate this into product requirements.
• Fluency in written and spoken English.
• A passion for nature!
• Familiarity with geospatial tools and platforms, sustainability reporting and/or biodiversity datasets desired.
• Familiarity with more than one product discipline to allow the candidate to support IBAT across the product development process desired.
SALARY:
The minimum gross annual salary for this position is GBP 53'627. While this is an indicative amount effective as of the current date, changes may occur as per IUCN's compensation practices without prior notice. The same applies to other organisations hosted by IUCN.
APPLICATIONS:
Applicants are requested to apply online through the HR Management System, by opening the vacancy announcement and pressing the "Apply" button.
Applicants will be asked to create an account and submit their profile information. Applications will not be accepted after the closing date. The vacancy closes at midnight, Swiss time (GMT+1 / GMT+2 during Daylight Saving Time, DST). Please note that only selected applicants will be personally contacted for interviews.
https://hrms.iucn.org/iresy/index.cfm?event=vac.show&vacId=11686&lang=en
About IUCN
IUCN is a membership Union uniquely composed of both government and civil society organisations. It provides public, private and non-governmental organisations with the knowledge and tools that enable human progress, economic development and nature conservation to take place together.
Created in 1948, IUCN is now the world’s largest and most diverse environmental network, harnessing the knowledge, resources and reach of more than 1,400 Member organisations and around 16,000 experts. It is a leading provider of conservation data, assessments and analysis. Its broad membership enables IUCN to fill the role of incubator and trusted repository of best practices, tools and international standards.
IUCN provides a neutral space in which diverse stakeholders including governments, NGOs, scientists, businesses, local communities, indigenous peoples organisations and others can work together to forge and implement solutions to environmental challenges and achieve sustainable development.
Working with many partners and supporters, IUCN implements a large and diverse portfolio of conservation projects worldwide. Combining the latest science with the traditional knowledge of local communities, these projects work to reverse habitat loss, restore ecosystems and improve people’s well-being.
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