Steve Messer, product & design manager

London, SE25
visitmy.website/about
boringmagi.cc/services

Passionate about innovation for the public good, making complex or tedious things more simple. Specialist in modern product methodologies, designing strategies, and mobilising teams to go from 0 → 1 or 1 → n.

Work experience

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Strategic Product Lead (contract)

Mar 2024 - Apr 2026

Led product strategy for a Major Government Project at the heart of England’s housing mission – scaling the team, the platform, and founding an AI product that the Prime Minister launched at London Tech Week. Contracted through my product consultancy, Boring Magic.

  • Grew the platform from 18 to over 170 local planning authorities publishing data, scaled datasets sixfold to 400+, and quadrupled traffic to 1.2 million weekly visitors
  • Conceived and led Extract – an AI tool reducing planning document conversion from 1–2 hours to under 15 minutes – from initial pitch through alpha; launched by the Prime Minister at London Tech Week as one of his AI Exemplars
  • Restructured two generalist teams into three specialised teams of ~40 people, and established the operating model, OKR framework, and team handbook that gave a growing distributed team the conditions to do its best work
  • Co-developed an economic model and Theory of Change showing the platform’s value across the ecosystem, supporting Spending Review business cases and backed by external research projecting £72bn in PropTech sector growth
  • Established working-in-the-open practices that provided the governance evidence needed to navigate scrutiny as a Government Major Project

Government Digital Service, Senior Product Manager (contract)

Dec 2022 - Feb 2024

Maternity cover on the GOV.UK Design System.

NHS Digital, Senior Product Manager

Aug 2022 - Dec 2022

Senior product manager on the Secure Data Environment service.

  • Provide direction to a multidisciplinary agile team on an alpha, prototyping and testing opportunities to make an end-to-end service more joined-up and scalable
  • Work alongside two UCD pairs on the alpha: each pair consists of one user researcher and one service designer
  • Develop goals and objectives for the multidisciplinary team
  • Lead on the team’s preparation for a service assessment
  • Assist the service owner and programme manager with roadmapping, creating strategic objectives, and introducing agile ways of working to teams across the programme
  • Co-design measurable goals for the end-to-end service with service owner, delivery teams and stakeholders so that we can demonstrate the service meets its policy intent
  • Champion users’ needs across the programme delivering the end-to-end service, helping to ensure the service helps users meet their intended outcomes

Claimer, Head of Product

Jul 2021 - Jul 2022

  • Establish the product team and its methodology at a seed-funded startup
  • Create roadmaps and product plans collaboratively with stakeholders, aligned to business objectives
  • Co-ordinate two multidisciplinary teams across multiple service stages
  • Manage new features, from inception through design and delivery
  • Help develop and define product vision and strategy for the product teams
  • Manage and coach one other product manager
  • Work alongside the Head of Growth on user personas, positioning and marketing

General Assembly, Product Management Instructional Associate

Sep 2018 - Dec 2021

Work closely with the lead instructor to create a friendly, collaborative and dynamic classroom community for the duration of a product management course. Act as a mentor, facilitator and, together with the lead instructor, are responsible for ensuring that every student on the course feels cared for and is receiving ongoing feedback on their course project.

Government Digital Service, Product Manager

Dec 2018 - Jul 2021

Deliver and iterate products on GOV.UK and GOV.UK Pay in line with users’ needs, designing product strategies, managing product backlogs, writing user stories and making decisions about prioritisation based on qualitative and quantitative evidence.

  • Led on Payments for GOV.UK Pay, focusing on payment types, channels, PSP integrations, microservices and UX for paying users.
  • Led a discovery and alpha on new recurring payments functionality for GOV.UK Pay.
  • Led a team working on a service providing support for extremely vulnerable people during the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Led the Explore Personalisation team of multidisciplinary UX professionals on a strategic discovery into personalising the experience of interacting with government.
  • Led the Search team to make site search work smarter for users.
  • Led a team working on the UK government’s Get ready for Brexit product.
  • Led the Search Performance & Resilience team on upgrading and migrating GOV.UK’s search engine backend, saving taxpayers £35k p.a.
  • Part of the GDS Product & Service Management Community organising body.

Government Digital Service, Associate Product Manager

Jan 2018 - Dec 2018

Associate product manager for GOV.UK’s licensing application, the blogs and campaigns platforms, and the Platform Health team – looking after d47 applications in the GOV.UK publishing stack and its performance.

  • Put together and managed an unconference for gov’t product managers feat. Marty Cagan.
  • Worked on GDPR compliance for Licensing, Blogs and Campaigns.
  • Led the team on publishing pipeline work, made content appear 10x quicker.
  • Part of the GDS Product & Service Management Community organising body.

Porism, Product Manager & Engagement Lead

Mar 2014 - Jan 2018

Own new product, Know My Neighbourhood. Co-own redevelopment of eCasework. Drive engagement with users and audiences of both products and LG Inform Plus, through content & social media, user experience, knowledge management and firstline support.

Main duties across product line: customer development, product design, roadmapping, maintain healthy backlog, manage development team and ensure product meets business & user needs; develop digital marketing strategy and measures; write and publish social, content, email and customer-facing support materials; ensure good SEO practice; and enhance user experience.

  • Introduced & implemented Agile methodologies to company.
  • Co-designed new iteration of eCasework through customer development and testing assumptions.
  • Boosted conversion rate by 20% with new growth strategy.
  • Devised and implemented self-service support portal for LG Inform Plus, reducing contact time.
  • Gained 141% increase for annual subcriptions for LG Inform Plus, maintained in following year.
  • Established 20% open rate for LGIP monthly newsletter, i7,500 recipients.

Education

University of Maryland, Modern Product Leadership
Sep 2024

Service Design College, Ethics in Design
Oct 2023 - Nov 2023

On Deck, Product Fellowship
Jan 2021 - Current

Harvard University, Computer Science for Business Professionals
Oct 2020 - Nov 2020

IDEO U, Designing Strategy
Feb 2020 - Apr 2020

General Assembly, Product Management
Nov 2016 - Jan 2017

Westminster Business School, Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing
Oct 2015 - Dec 2015

Bath Spa University, English Literature & Creative Writing
Sep 2006 - Jul 2009