Product Owner I

The Product Owner I leads one or more agile scrum teams by shaping product planning, managing priorities, and maintaining the product backlog to deliver outcomes aligned with product strategy and goals. This onsite role in Omaha connects customer needs and internal stakeholder input with delivery execution to support revenue and customer satisfaction results.

Role Overview

In partnership with the Product Manager, the Product Owner translates the overall product strategy into quarterly program increment (PI) goals and sprint-level priorities. The role bridges product strategy and development execution by guiding backlog content, supporting iteration planning, and coordinating with support partners to help ensure transparency and alignment across teams within the agile release train (ART).

Core Responsibilities

• Break down product strategy and roadmap into program increment (quarterly) goals and sprint-level priorities in partnership with the Product Manager.
• Gather customer and internal stakeholder needs to inform product strategy and roadmap, including competitive knowledge and industry trends.
• Maintain the content and integrity of the product team backlog, including stories, enablers, and defects, ensuring stories reflect ART-level features.
• Prioritize backlog item sequence and communicate that sequence during backlog refinement and iteration planning.
• Practice servant leadership, incorporating feedback and suggestions from team retrospectives into future delivery activities.
• Ensure working product demos are presented to key stakeholders to support awareness, transparency, and input.
• Collaborate with leaders across the ART to maintain transparency of work, clarify dependencies, align on working methods, and ensure priorities are aligned.
• Evaluate individual agile team member effectiveness and contributions, helping ensure teams remain high performing and making recommendations to add or remove team members as needed.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, or a relevant field.
• Two to four years of experience.
• At least three years of agile Product Owner experience in scrum and scaled agile environments.
• Experience delivering software products using agile principles, including planning and estimating with a continuous improvement mindset.
• Proven track record of bringing successful products to market on time, incorporating a variety of development and delivery strategies such as third party, insourcing, and outsourcing.
• Proven success in leading, coaching, and motivating cross-functional empowered teams.
• Experience with market research, competitive analysis, and technology trend analysis.
• Ability to assess the impact of new product initiatives on the delivery team environment.
• Demonstrated understanding and empathy for customer needs and pain points, amplifying the voice of the customer throughout product development and delivery.
• Facilitation and collaboration skills, including the ability to facilitate decision-making and broker agreements among diverse or conflicting perspectives and priorities.
• Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills, including establishing and advocating for both customer and delivery team viewpoints.
• Ability to communicate and present complex information to multiple levels of the organization by translating data into actionable recommendations.
• Ability to make timely, independent decisions in a fast-paced, results-driven environment, adjusting as needed in close partnership with delivery teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• At least six years of experience in one or more of: product management, product development, strategic planning, process management, change delivery, or as an agile product owner.
• Ability to meet deadlines, achieve goals, manage risk, solve problems, and work under pressure in a dynamic and complex environment.
• Expertise navigating matrixed organizations and teams to consistently deliver optimal value to the customer and business.
• Knowledge and understanding of product management in the regulated financial services industry.
• Ability to evaluate risks and impacts on the product line, generating creative alternatives and understanding trade-offs.
• Excellent analytical skills and orientation toward making data-driven technical decisions.
• One or more agile certifications: Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Agile Certified Practioner (PMI-ACP), Certified Agile Product Manager (CAL-PM), SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (SAFe POPM), or Certified LeSS Practioner (CLP).
• Ability to train and coach all levels of the organization.
• Experience with software development lifecycle management and tooling, with Jira Align or Azure Dev Ops knowledge a plus.

Location and Work Requirements

• Omaha, NE (onsite), full-time in the company office.
• Physically comfortable with discretion about walking, standing, and sitting.
• Ability to communicate effectively with others to exchange information.
• Wide latitude in determining objectives and approaches to critical assignments.
• No adverse working or environmental conditions expected.

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive compensation package
• Performance-based incentives
• Comprehensive benefits program, including health, dental, and vision
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid time off
• Professional development opportunities

Additional Notes

• Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States. The company is not able to sponsor or assume sponsorship of employment visas.
• If you have a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act or similar state or local law and want to discuss potential reasonable accommodations related to applying for employment, contact the Benefits Department at 210-321-8400.

Core Values

• Integrity
• Collaboration
• Pursuit of Excellence
• Forward Thinking