IT Technical – Product Owner
We are seeking a
Product Owner to support our Financial Markets and Real Estate portfolio. This role will partner closely with Product Managers, SMEs, developers, QA, and stakeholders to drive backlog management, requirements refinement, and delivery of value-driven features. The ideal candidate has experience in financial services and real estate domains and a proven ability to lead distributed Agile teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Backlog Ownership: Define, prioritize, and maintain a well-groomed product backlog in ADO. Ensure stories are clear, properly sized, and aligned with roadmap objectives.
- Requirements Refinement: Translate ambiguous business needs into actionable user stories with clear acceptance criteria. Partner with SMEs and stakeholders to ensure requirements reflect business context and technical feasibility.
- Voice of the Customer: Act as the liaison between business stakeholders and the Agile team, ensuring customer value is delivered in each iteration.
- Agile Collaboration: Lead and participate in Agile ceremonies, including daily stand-ups, sprint planning, backlog refinement, and reviews. Partner with other Product Owners to manage cross-team dependencies.
- Validation & Acceptance: Review completed work items to ensure quality and alignment with business value. Provide timely feedback to the development team.
- Leadership & Communication: Drive alignment across distributed teams and stakeholders. Mentor team members and promote best practices in backlog management, Agile delivery, and stakeholder engagement.
- Coaching & Process Improvement: Support newer Agile teams (offshore in India) in adopting Agile practices. Step in as needed to support Scrum Master or QA roles.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree required.
- Proven Product Owner experience with backlog management, requirements definition, and Agile delivery.
- Industry background in Financial Markets, Real Estate, Structured Finance/Securitization, Loan & Credit Markets, or related areas strongly preferred.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills – ability to tailor messaging to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience leading distributed Agile teams, ideally offshore teams.
- Familiarity with ADO, Miro, MS Office Suite, and generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Cursor).
- Agile/SAFe certification and/or finance/accounting certifications preferred.
Soft Skills
- Confident, proactive communicator with strong leadership presence.
- Ability to build trust, influence stakeholders, and guide Agile teams through change.
- Strong analytical mindset and ability to break down complex business needs into deliverables.
Travel & Onsite
- Expected to attend quarterly or semi-annual Pre-PI Planning events (2–3 day sessions in major US cities).
