Product Owner

Makai Labs offers a remote-friendly Product Owner role in New Jersey, with a yearly salary of USD 120,000 to 130,000. This position centers on turning business strategy into actionable development work, managing the product backlog, defining user stories, and aligning engineering, design, and stakeholders. The role is anchored in the Eastern time zone and supports career growth within a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

Benefits

• Fully remote role, aligned to the Eastern time zone
• Opportunities to work in person with local colleagues
• Generous paid time off
• Flexible work schedule
• Free health insurance
• 401(k) with company matching
• Career growth and development opportunities

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain the product backlog, ensuring priorities are transparent, up-to-date, and actionable
• Lead Agile ceremonies including backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily standups, and retrospectives
• Monitor progress toward goals and communicate status clearly to stakeholders
• Oversee testing and validation to ensure features meet acceptance criteria
• Partner with UX/UI designers to ensure the user experience aligns with business objectives
• Document, analyze, and iterate based on user feedback and performance metrics

Requirements

• Five or more years in a Product Owner role or similar position
• Solid understanding of Scrum and Agile product delivery
• Track record of writing clear, detailed user stories and functional specifications
• Excellent communication and documentation skills — responsive and concise
• Highly organized and proactive with strong follow-through
• Experience collaborating cross-functionally in fast-moving or startup environments
• Familiarity with Jira, Confluence, and Figma is preferred

Technologies

• Jira
• Confluence
• Figma

Nice to have

• Experience with SaaS, AI, or ML
• Experience with product marketing and go-to-market strategies

About Makai

Makai uses AI and data to address enterprise-scale operational and strategic challenges. The company supports automation, human–machine teaming, product design and development, and market intelligence. Makai emphasizes solutions that adapt to people, recognizing that technology will never be 100 percent accurate and that people remain essential to successful outcomes.

About the role

Makai Labs seeks a Product Owner who takes ownership, acts with urgency, and communicates clearly. You will translate business strategy into actionable work, manage backlogs, define precise user stories, and ensure engineering and design teams have what they need to execute efficiently. The right candidate is detail-oriented, thrives in a fast-paced setting, and keeps cross-functional teams aligned through crisp documentation and collaboration.

The ideal candidate will be able to

• Collaborate with stakeholders and Product Managers to define and prioritize product features and user stories
• Write detailed specs, acceptance criteria, and documentation that remove ambiguity and guide development
• Analyze and document business requirements, ensuring technical teams understand the rationale behind each feature
• Communicate proactively, especially via email and asynchronous channels, keeping teams aligned
• Identify opportunities for process improvement and efficiency across teams and workflows
• Balance urgency with precision to ensure high-quality execution under tight timelines

Core values

• Be a flexible, innovative, and creative thinker
• Be congenial and a team player
• Be self-sufficient
• Be self-driven with an ownership mentality
• Maintain a strong work ethic