Product Owner SURF Communication Channels

Does online technology and strategy get your heart racing? Are you customer-focused and proactive, and do you enjoy collaborating with colleagues from a wide range of departments? If so, we’d love to have you join us as a Product Owner on SURF’s Online, Content & Events team!

Where you will work

SURF is the ICT cooperative for Dutch educational and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation challenges to enhance the quality of education and research. Working at SURF means working for a unique and open organization. You can see this in everything: the organizational structure, the composition of the project teams, the culture in our offices, and the atmosphere among colleagues. SURF offers excellent employment conditions and takes a flexible approach to work-life balance. Employees enjoy working independently. In addition, everyone is given the space and freedom to apply and develop their talents as effectively and broadly as possible.

The team you will join

You will be joining the Online, Content & Events team, one of SURF’s two communications teams. Working closely with our other communications staff, we plan and produce our communications materials and events for our members, users, and other stakeholders. In addition, we oversee and advise on all other content and channels through which we engage with our stakeholders. In doing so, we ensure consistency in our brand identity, tone of voice, and positioning. We also measure the reach and impact of our communication objectives and outside-in approach from the members’ perspective.

What you will do

As a Product Owner, you will work on our corporate websites SURF.nl and communities.surf.nl, as well as on integrating them with other online channels and tools. You will serve as the primary point of contact for the development and refinement of our online channels and will manage internal communication regarding these efforts. In frequent consultation with suppliers (including developers, designers, support, and hosting providers) and internal contacts, you will advise on the application of the brand guidelines (design system) and privacy and security policies, and you will oversee the technical aspects of existing and new communication channels. You will ensure clear (financial) agreements and schedules, monitor them, and report regularly on progress.

What else you’ll be doing

• Contributing to and developing an online vision and strategy that impacts our target groups in education and research.
• Proposing the development or implementation of new and existing online channels and functionalities. You will support these proposals with business cases, impact analyses, user stories, and roadmaps.
• Consulting with internal and external stakeholders and suppliers and ensuring consistency across various corporate online communications.
• Initiating and overseeing contract management and procurement (including tenders) with suppliers.
• Manage online products/services by, among other things, implementing improvements, analyzing customer needs, arranging support, optimizing processes, and focusing on revenue and costs.
• Coordinate (complex) activities related to the development, management, and implementation of new online projects and redesigns.
• Identify user requirements, assess feasibility and functionality, and draft specifications.
• Ensure functional management, where possible in collaboration with colleagues from Internal IT.
• Advise on and monitor the user-friendly design of our CMS platforms (Drupal, WordPress) and train users by conducting workshops and writing manuals.

Your skills and experience

You are an experienced and proactive professional with a strong affinity for online services. You move easily between technology, design, and user needs, and know how to translate complex issues into clear, actionable solutions. You have strong communication skills, think in terms of possibilities, and feel at home in a dynamic, data-driven environment.

In addition, you have:

• A college or university level of work and thinking, and at least 5 years of relevant work experience in an online field, preferably in an editorial or communications role.
• Solid knowledge of technology and design (front-end and back-end websites), administration, content management systems (including Drupal and WordPress), ticket systems (JIRA), and analytics tools (e.g., Piwik). Keeps up with trends and new developments, including AI.
• Knowledge of front-end frameworks and the setup and use of Design Systems.
• Familiar with the (implementation of) Web Accessibility Guidelines.
• Experience with online development of new and existing channels.
• Experience with agile working and methodologies (e.g., Scrum or Kanban), extensive experience coordinating and conducting User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
• Experience with stakeholder management in a complex, data-driven organization.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to make technology understandable to end users and vice versa.

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.