Hybrid Product Owner

at Transamerica

• Job title: Product Owner
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Junior, Mid level
• Salary: $102,000 - $130,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Cedar Rapids, United States

About the role

• Product Owner responsible for product vision and agile team leadership at Transamerica. Researching market insights and collaborating with multiple teams to drive product success.

Responsibilities

• Research and evaluate market-based and customer-inspired insights that inform the product's vision and comprehensive strategy planning.
• Provide vision and serve as a champion of customer perspectives to the Agile team in the form of clearly written epics, themes and user stories each with clear acceptance criteria in collaboration with the team.
• Help the team make business trade-offs between near term and longer term product goals.
• Provide leadership to make the hard calls on scope and competing priorities while realistically manage stakeholder demands.
• Establish and prioritize the product roadmap and its backlog in collaboration with the team.
• Collaborate proactively in ceremonies with UI/UX team, product scrum team, and other product owners to maintain the product roadmap, business outcomes, and goals.
• Lead regular backlog refinement workshops to help estimate relative feature value and update delivery forecasts to aid prioritization, minimize oversubscription of delivery teams and manage stakeholder expectations.
• Ensure product aligns with company strategy and broader product strategies through regular communication with customers, stakeholders and product management.
• Coordinate with the Scrum Master to facilitate short feedback loops between delivery teams and stakeholders through frequent deliveries and sharing of lessons learned.
• Engage in scaled agile practices and coordinate with other Product owners (as needed) to promote cross-team alignment around product roadmaps and dependencies.
• Lead product release planning with technical and business stakeholders and set expectation for delivery of new functionalities.
• Participate in system demos at the end of the iteration and provide story/feature acceptance per the pre-agreed “Definition of Done” criteria.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business, computer science, or experience work in a related field.
• Solid understanding of the product lifecycle.
• In-depth experience with agile methodologies, technical understanding of products, and up-to-date on industry standards and best practices.
• Comfortable working with multiple teams, in-house and remote.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Accurate and precise attention to detail.
• Able to build strong interpersonal relationships with business analysts, UI/UX team, leadership, senior management, and internal and external stakeholders.
• Experience with JIRA, or a similar agile product management toolset.
• Proficient computer skills, Microsoft Office Suite; working knowledge of software development.
• Two years of related work experience (preferred).
• Product Owner certification (e.g. CSPO, SAFe POPM) (preferred).
• Track record of continued and recent education in agile, including training, conferences, user groups and self-study (preferred).
• Knowledge of approaches discussed in the agile space: XP, Kanban, SAFe, LeSS, Crystal, FDD, etc. (preferred).
• Experience as a collaborative leader (preferred).

Benefits

• Competitive Pay
• Bonus for Eligible Employees
• Benefits Package
• Pension Plan
• 401k Match
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Disability Insurance
• Medical Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Employee Discounts
• Career Training & Development Opportunities
• Health and Work/Life Balance Benefits
• Paid Time Off starting at 160 hours annually for employees in their first year of service.
• Ten (10) paid holidays per year (typically mirroring the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) holidays).
• Be Well Company holistic wellness program, which includes Wellness Coaching and Reward Dollars
• Parental Leave – fifteen (15) days of paid parental leave per calendar year to eligible employees with at least one year of service at the time of birth, placement of an adopted child, or placement of a foster care child.
• Adoption Assistance
• Employee Assistance Program
• College Coach Program
• Back-Up Care Program
• PTO for Volunteer Hours
• Employee Matching Gifts Program
• Employee Resource Groups
• Inclusion and Diversity Programs
• Employee Recognition Program
• Referral Bonus Programs