Senior Product Owner @ ThoughtFocus

JOB SUMMARY

The Technical Product Owner IV or Principle Technical Product Owner owns the technical product vision, product goals and product roadmap creations with stakeholders in partnership with the Product Manager. They possess the necessary technical product knowledge to drive strategic conversations and decisions about the product and enhance value to CSI, its customers and the products CSI supports. They are responsible for understanding technology strategies to support the creation of product roadmaps that drive value and deliver benefits to customers and stakeholders. This role is a leader in the organization and strives to energize and excite product stakeholders and technical teams about current and future product offerings from a technology driven company. They own communications with senior leaders and they are collaborative and passionate about building and/or enhancing great products and experiences.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Conduit between user needs, technical capabilities and engineering requirements, developing these into roadmaps and requirements for the Agile backlog of a development team.

Makes tough decisions on trade-offs between features, quality, and dates in order to provide the best solution for stakeholders and customers.

Owns all communications, issue resolutions, priority decisions and roadmap discussions with key stakeholders.

Partners with the business teams and customers during the creation of their product strategies, product visions and product goals.

Creates prioritized technical roadmaps and requirements that aligns with the product vision and goals.

Supports the measurement of product benefits to determine if product goals are achieved.

Primary liaison between business stakeholders and technical teams.

Communicates the product vision and goals to technical teams to ensure clear understanding of goals. Ensures that products being built bring value and meet the product goals.

Collaborates with stakeholders on priorities and requirements.

Owns all aspects of the product backlog: Priorities, backlog refinement, iteration planning, breaks down epics and features into manageable user stories, creates acceptance criteria and manages story acceptance, holds technology demos, etc.

Leads team through technology transformation efforts which includes the creation of micro services and APIs for Cloud migration initiatives.

Owns the communication of build progress and status to stakeholders and leaders. Escalates risks as needed. Provides leadership with the information needed for them to be able to help resolve team issues and risks.

Attends customer meetings as required in order to understand customer needs and create products that drive value and deliver benefits.

Provides consultative sessions to customers and vendors in partnership with Product Managers as a recognized Subject Matter Expert in regard to their assigned product portfolio and direction.

Takes an informal mentorship role with less experienced Product Owners as needed.

Energizes team to accomplish goals.

PRIMARY RESULTS ACCOUNTABLE FOR ACHIEVING

Maintains an accurate and prioritized product roadmap and backlog.

Ensures technology engineering teams are working on the most important product features.

Aligns product development efforts with the larger product strategy and vision.

Creates value-based user stories that explain what users are doing and why to ensure proper business context drives appropriate product designs.

Validates that the enhancements that have been rolled out have met the needs of our customers and vendors per feedback from the Product Manager.

Maintains software/tools used by product managers, product owners and technical teams to efficiently manage work.

Works directly with internal stakeholders, providing clearly guided AGILE management, influencing SDLC process, maintaining product management software, ensuring well-groomed/prioritized backlog management, high quality product delivery, sharing of knowledge and a willingness to always undertake any team initiative.

Possesses a willingness to empower as well as encourages commitments and positive attitudes in the team.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

Education & Certifications:

Education or job knowledge equivalent to college or university undergraduate education.

Preferred Certifications:

SAFe Certifications

Product Manager/Product Owner Certifications - Pragmatic Certified, Certified Product Owner (CPO or CSPO), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), etc.

Cloud Certifications (Microsoft Azure preferred)

Experience:

The minimum amount of relevant work experience required to successfully perform the job, is seven (7) years.

5+ years of experience with SDLC/Agile development technologies including user story definition.

5+ years of experience working with large development teams with multiple scrum teams and development interdependencies.

3+ years of experience building roadmaps and working in roadmap and requirements management systems such as Aha, Jira and Azure.

3+ years of experience working with APIs/web service technologies.

Required Skills:

Communication skills

Influence skills

Decision Making skills

Problem Solving skills

Execution skills

Reasoning skills

Computer skills

Administrative skills

Analytical skills

Leadership skills

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

This position requires regular contact both inside and/or outside the company.

DECISION MAKING

This position requires frequent decision making and the ability to plan and perform unusual or difficult work with general operation methods/procedures.

SUPERVISION RECEIVED

General Direction. Exercises considerable latitude in determining objectives and approach to assignments. Completed work is reviewed from a long-time perspective for desired results.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

The work environment characteristics described below are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.