Job Overview
The Product Owner plays a critical role in leading various aspects of product development, acting as the bridge between the product vision and the development team. A successful Product Owner leverages their deep understanding of the software and integration market to communicate a clear product vision to stakeholders and ensure alignment throughout the development process.
Product Owners serve as the voice of the customer to guide development teams in building software capabilities with the highest business and customer impact. They represent business needs and priorities, prioritize and manage the product backlog, and incorporate feedback from business stakeholders to guide continuous product improvement.
Drawing on their technical background, the Product Owner works closely with the development team to help them achieve sprint goals and deliver high-quality solutions that meet client expectations. This role collaborates directly with the Product Manager to prioritize and maintain the product backlog, balancing customer needs, business objectives, technical debt, and delivery timelines.
It is essential for the Product Owner to have solid technical awareness and an understanding of the product's architecture and capabilities. This enables effective decision-making, better guidance for the team, and ensures delivery of scalable, reliable, and valuable product enhancements.
Key Responsibilities and Duties
Primary Responsibilities
- Acts as primary liaison between developers and stakeholders
- Act as the voice of the customer to guide all stages of software development, including user story development, sprint planning, and prioritization of the product backlog
- Manages the product backlog for clients and for internal projects
- Creates detailed specifications and user stories for features, bugs, and enhancements
- Understand business and end-user needs; identify and prioritize features to be delivered to meet those needs
- Work with business and technical stakeholders to develop and document user stories
Development Team Support
- Assists the AGILE Team by providing direction and clarity on requirements or development approach
- Guide and support the development team in making informed product and architectural decisions that align with the product vision, roadmap, and scalability needs
- Work with the development team to create acceptance criteria and definitions of failures and done
- Assist the team on the development of feature tests, test cases, and regression tests
Stakeholder Management
- Conducts delivery meetings with Clients and Stakeholders
- Communicates effectively with Clients both internal and external
- Set expectations with business stakeholders for delivery of new capabilities, features, and functionalities
- Lead the sprint review meeting to present the output from the sprint to key stakeholders
Quality Assurance and Delivery
- Ensures quality delivery and validate the final product deliverables
- Assist in the management of deployments, validating releases to maintain system stability and uptime
- Perform comprehensive testing of beta features, ensuring alignment with requirements and acceptance criteria before release
Planning and Estimation
- Assist in the development of accurate estimates, effort sizing, and delivery timelines based on technical complexity and business priorities
- Participate in sprint planning to determine the team's objectives for the upcoming sprint
- Prioritize and maintain the product backlog
Agile Ceremonies and Continuous Improvement
- Participate actively in sprint ceremonies (backlog grooming and refinement, planning, reviews)
- Participate in agile ceremonies such as stand-ups, story refinements, and team retrospectives; ensure the team has a clear understanding of priorities and next steps
- Analyze feedback from sprint reviews, and other data such as end user feedback and operational metrics, to identify and understand product needs
Qualifications
Education and Experience
- Bachelor's degree (or equivalent years of experience)
- 2+ years as a developer, management experience a plus
- 3+ years of relevant work experience with experience as a Product Owner role preferred
Technical Skills
- Experience in C#, SQL, .NET framework, .NET Core, React and JavaScript preferred
- Application integration experience
- Experience with API testing tools such as Postman
- Working knowledge of Microsoft products (Excel, Word, Presentation, SharePoint, Teams)
- Manufacturing, Distribution, and Epicor ERP experience as plus, but not required
Product Management and Agile Skills
- Experience writing user stories and managing requirement documentation
- Experience using the Agile Software Development Practices
- Advanced knowledge of agile development methodologies
- Knowledge and experience with Agile tools, including Jira, Confluence, and GIT highly preferred
- Knowledge of agile planning tools (e.g. JIRA, Confluence) preferred
Certifications (Preferred)
- Product Owner certifications (e.g. Certified Scrum Product Owner, SAFe Product Owner Certification) a plus
Core Competencies and Skills
- Possess skills in the English language as a native speaker or by successfully passing a C1 or C2 level on the CEFR English Language Levels test.
- Excellent communication skills, self-starting, organized, and willingness to get things done
- Ability to understand complex business problems and identify and interpret business needs
- Demonstrated facilitation and influencing skills to drive decision making among stakeholders with diverse perspectives and priorities
- Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical information in a condensed manner to various stakeholders verbally and in writing
- Strong problem solving and analytical skills
- Ability to collaborate effectively within a remote team
- Proactive mindset with a strong sense of ownership, driven by a desire for continuous growth and a commitment to advancing the product alongside the team