Summary:
The Product Owner will collaborate with business partners, IT partners, and delivery/engineering teams to build and execute a strategy in alignment with business priorities. Ownership of the product roadmap and a quality backlog will ensure teams deliver the highest-value outcomes with clear priorities and well-defined work. The Product Owner is responsible for maintaining strong relationships with a variety of partners to facilitate discussions, identify dependencies or areas of efficiency, and ensure successful execution of features.

In addition, the Product Owner will build and document requirements in the form of initiatives, epics, features and user stories, communicate daily with the delivery/engineering team, run team meetings and ceremonies, and accept or reject work results.

The Product Owner is an excellent communicator who excels when coordinating efforts, setting expectations, and driving results.

Responsibilities:

• Product Strategy & Planning
• Define and maintain the product vision, goals, and roadmap in alignment with high-value outcomes.
• Partner with stakeholders to define outcomes, success metrics, and sequencing.

Backlog ownership

• Own and refine the product backlog: initiatives/epics/features/stories, prioritization, and readiness, ensuring business direction leads to prioritized, well-shaped work.
• Work with IT teams to manage and prioritize technical debt, ensuring proper allocation of time between maintenance and feature work.
• Define and enforce standards (e.g., Definition of Ready, Definition of Done, clear acceptance criteria, intake process, backlog hygiene).

Discovery & Stakeholder Alignment

• Drive discovery to surface and clarify problems while presenting high-value solutions.
• Facilitate tradeoff decisions by presenting clear options (scope, sequencing, dependencies, risks).
• Manage and report on critical metrics.

Delivery Partnership:

• Partner with IT partners and delivery/engineering teams to plan and manage flow.
• Support a balance of Scrum practices (e.g., sprint goals/planning).
  

Position Requirements (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities):

• Experience as a Product Owner (or equivalent) owning prioritization and backlog quality for enterprise platforms. Customer portal experience is preferred.
• Strong skills in backlog creation (epics/stories), acceptance criteria, and prioritization methods.
• Proven ability to run discovery and align stakeholders around outcomes and tradeoffs.
• Experience working with Kanban teams, scrum teams, agile ceremonies, etc. Experience with Jira is preferred.
• Strong facilitation and communication skills, including operating effectively with a variety of stakeholders and technical/data teams.
• Experience coordinating efforts across business units and technical teams.
• Knowledge of program, project and change management practices.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Business, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Licensing and/or Certification