Product Owner

HME Hospitality and Specialty Comm is seeking a Product Owner to drive product execution with a customer-focused, detail-driven approach. This onsite role in Carlsbad, CA centers on building clear requirements and user stories, aligning scrum teams on sprint and release goals, and ensuring the final experience matches intended usability needs through validation and UAT sign-off.

What you will do

• Create, maintain, and fully own detailed requirement and user story artifacts, including acceptance criteria, based on high-level requirements and epics from multiple sources.
• Translate requirements across hardware, firmware, software, cloud, installation, and support into user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Embed with product development and scrum teams to set sprint goals, ensuring requirements are understood, clarified, and ready for delivery.
• Own sprint and release execution, partnering with Project Management to track timelines and scope. Plan releases and upgrades, and address production issues as they arise during sprints.
• Maintain the intended User Experience across the product lifecycle through validation activities with users and stakeholders.
• Coordinate with Product Management to understand roadmap direction and intent, and perform tradeoff analysis and requirements reconciliation with stakeholders.
• Act as the voice of the customer within the scrum and development team, escalating to the Product Manager when needed.
• Bring field and customer feedback into the backlog, working with field testing and support teams to capture what matters for upcoming work.
• Own the backlog at the detailed level, including grooming and real-time priority setting.
• Serve as the authority on story acceptance and on sprint and release planning within the Product Manager’s release strategy.
• Coordinate User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and provide sign-off prior to release.
• Partner with the development team on defect management, technical debt prioritization, and impact analysis.
• Where necessary, interact with internal and external customers to understand requirements, business needs, problems to be solved, and pain points.
• Maintain a multi-sprint roadmap to provide visibility into feature releases consistent with the roadmap.
• Monitor relevant technology developments and identify continuous improvement opportunities for the product.
• Raise, document, and track Engineering Action Requests (EARs) for the assigned product, linking them to backlog and release plans. Escalate EARs affecting scope, cost, schedule, or customers to the Product Manager for approval, and confirm fixes in the field.
• Maintain hardware kit configurations, SKUs, and bills of material in D365 aligned with Product Manager kit and pricing decisions, coordinating changes with Engineering, Supply Chain, and Operations.
• Provide technical input on last-time buys and component end-of-life considerations, capturing redesign and alternate-part implications in the backlog.
• Develop and deliver technical training for new products and releases, including train-the-trainer sessions for Tech Support and field teams, plus technical content for Sales and Corporate Accounts training.

Required qualifications

• Product Owner and/or product management experience, with at least 4 years of experience.
• Relentless focus on world-class user experiences.
• Technical knowledge of hardware, firmware, software, and cloud development.
• Product Owner experience across multiple environments.
• Proven track record of successfully bringing new products to market.
• Self-starter and self-driven attitude.
• Ability to collaborate and build rapport across Engineering, Sales, and cross-functional teams, as well as customers, partners, and other external parties.
• Ability to manage concurrent projects in a fast-paced environment and adapt to schedule changes and re-prioritized responsibilities.
• Agile product owner/development experience (required).
• Experience with backlog management tools: Jira, Azure DevOps, or equivalent.

Preferred certifications

• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or SAFe POPM certification (preferred); Pragmatic Institute certification is a plus.

Tools and technologies

• Jira
• Azure DevOps
• D365

Compensation and location

Location: Carlsbad, CA (onsite)

Salary: USD 85,300 - 113,700 per year

Travel

• 10-20%, including customer sites for field validation and UAT.

Education

BA/BS Degree (4 years college) in Business, Marketing, Engineering, Computer Science, or Related Field.

Benefits

• Tuition reimbursement
• 3 weeks paid vacation your first year
• Paid holidays
• Medical coverage
• Vision coverage
• Dental coverage
• Pet insurance
• Life insurance
• 401K contributions