Associate Director, Digital Product Owner (Lonza - Capsugel)

Location: The preferred candidate will be based in Morristown, NJ or Tampa, FL, with the ability to work from one of the Lonza-Capsugel office locations.

What you will get:

Below you will find a comprehensive summary of the benefits package we offer:

• Performance-related bonus.
• Medical, dental and vision insurance.
• 401(k) matching plan.
• Life insurance, as well as short-term and long-term disability insurance.
• Employee assistance programs.
• Paid time off (PTO).

Compensation for this role will be determined by the candidate's qualifications, skills, experience, and relevant knowledge.

What will you do:

Lonza Capsugel is undergoing an exciting digital transformation, and our Digital Platforms & Transformation team is seeking an entrepreneurial, systems-minded Associate Director, Digital Product Owner to lead the strategy, delivery, and continuous evolution of Capsugel's global customer portal. This role serves as the business owner of the digital customer experience, translating commercial objectives and customer needs into a prioritized product roadmap and scalable technical solutions. The successful candidate will combine deep digital product management expertise with hands-on experience leading enterprise portal implementations, systems integrations, and agile delivery teams. This position requires a strong foundation in product ownership, business analysis, software development lifecycle (SDLC) management, customer experience design, and cross-functional leadership. The ideal candidate will be equally comfortable engaging executive stakeholders, defining product strategy, managing vendors, and making day-to-day delivery decisions with development teams.

Strategic Product Leadership

• Own and communicate the product vision and roadmap
• Define success metrics, KPIs, and adoption targets to ensure measurable business outcomes.
• Balance customer needs, business priorities, technical constraints, and regulatory requirements when making roadmap decisions.

Product Ownership & Agile Delivery

• Actively serve as Product Owner; own and prioritize the product backlog, ensuring alignment to business objectives and customer value.
• Write and maintain detailed user stories, acceptance criteria, release plans, and feature specifications.
• Lead backlog refinement, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and release readiness activities.
• Make informed trade-off decisions regarding scope, schedule, quality, and business value.

Customer Experience & Requirements Management

• Gather, document, validate, and prioritize customer, commercial, and operational requirements.
• Facilitate workshops, interviews, and discovery sessions with stakeholders across regions and functions.
• Develop customer journey maps, process flows, personas, and business cases to support product decisions.

Testing & Release Management

• Own user acceptance testing (UAT) strategy and business validation activities.
• Define test scenarios and acceptance criteria to ensure successful releases.
• Assess release readiness and communicate deployment risks, dependencies, and mitigation plans.

Enterprise Systems & Integration Partner

• Partner with architecture and engineering teams to design scalable solutions across enterprise platforms.
• Drive integrations between customer-facing digital platforms and backend systems including CRM, ERP, PIM, DAM, Identity Management, and eCommerce technologies.
• Ensure data quality, security, governance, and compliance requirements are addressed throughout the product lifecycle.

What we are looking for:

• Bachelor's degree in business, Computer Science, Engineering, Life Sciences, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in digital product management, customer portals, eCommerce, or digital customer experience, preferably within a complex B2B environment.
• Demonstrated experience serving as the primary Product Owner for a customer-facing digital product, with accountability for backlog prioritization, release decisions, stakeholder alignment, and value realization.
• Demonstrated experience owning product strategy, roadmap development, backlog prioritization, agile delivery, testing, release management, and value realization.
• Experience leading customer portal, digital experience, self-service, or eCommerce products that support customer workflows such as account management, product search, document access, order management, case management, or digital self-service.
• Proven success leading customer-facing digital products in a complex enterprise ecosystem, including integration of CRM, ERP, PIM, CMS/DXP, identity management, analytics, and middleware platforms. Examples include Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, Adobe Commerce, Informatica P360, SnapLogic, MuleSoft, or comparable enterprise technologies.
• Experience managing cross-functional delivery teams, external implementation partners, software vendors, consulting organizations, and global stakeholder groups.
• Strong understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC), agile methodologies, systems integration, architecture principles, and digital product delivery best practices.
• Demonstrated experience translating ambiguous business challenges into actionable product requirements, roadmap priorities, and measurable business outcomes.
• Experience translating customer, commercial, and operational requirements into scalable digital solutions and measurable business value.
• Demonstrated ability to lead user acceptance testing (UAT), release readiness reviews, deployment planning, risk assessment, dependency management, and go/no-go decision processes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence stakeholders from individual contributors through executive leadership.
• Strong analytical problem-solving, systems thinking, and decision-making capabilities.
• Pharmaceutical, life sciences, manufacturing, or other regulated-industry experience is highly desirable.
• Agile Product Owner, Scrum Product Owner, SAFe POPM, or equivalent certification preferred.
• This is a hybrid position based in Morristown, NJ with up to 20% travel expected.