Product Owner - Platform Team

RTI International’s Platform Team is seeking a Product Owner to support, operate, maintain, and enhance shared platform capabilities, while helping shape new platform services.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with project teams, software teams, I.T., business stakeholders, and platform engineers to gather requirements and translate needs into actionable platform work.
• Coordinate intake, onboarding, communication, and adoption processes for teams using shared platform services, including support for prioritization.
• Support definition of platform support models, service expectations, escalation paths, and operational procedures; maintain knowledge base materials.
• Work with platform engineering teams to support issue resolution, backlog refinement, user communication, and service improvement initiatives.
• Enable agile delivery by writing epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria; participate in sprint planning, demos, retrospectives, and roadmap reviews.
• Track and report platform usage, customer feedback, operational performance, and adoption trends to identify improvement opportunities.
• Assist with cost modeling and usage analysis, including budgeting, forecasting, chargeback, showback, and project cost estimation for shared platform services.
• Partner with cybersecurity, compliance, infrastructure, and governance teams to help ensure platform services align with organizational, security, and regulatory expectations.
• Maintain awareness of inherited platform controls, project-level responsibilities, compliance boundaries, and regulated research environment considerations; help communicate these clearly.
• Develop and maintain reusable platform reference materials, including onboarding documentation, training content, communications, and stakeholder updates.
• Follow and document ownership boundaries across platform teams, infrastructure teams, security teams, software teams, data teams, and project stakeholders.
• Support stakeholder alignment, service roadmap coordination, and cross-functional decision-making under the direction of senior product owners and platform leadership.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree and at least 3 years of relevant experience, or Master’s degree and at least 1 year of relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Experience with enterprise-scale shared technology platforms; stakeholder engagement & service delivery; product life cycle; operations & governance; cost modeling; agile delivery; and cross-functional technology coordination.
• Ability to produce professional documentation supporting product service offerings, roadmaps, lifecycle plans, and related materials across multiple systems.
• Ability to translate business, research, technical, operational, security, and compliance needs into actionable requirements.
• Familiarity with Scaled Agile Frameworks (SAFe) practices and work tracking software.
• Understanding of development methodologies for cloud-based platforms, including SDLC, AI-DLC, DevSecOps, and CI/CD practices.
• Analytics skills to analyze product usage, customer feedback, cost trends, operational performance, and adoption patterns.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills to explain technical and operational concepts for diverse audiences.
• Ability to balance priorities across customer needs, operational stability, compliance requirements, cost efficiency, and service delivery.
• Strong problem-solving, facilitation, and decision-making skills.
• Demonstrated commitment to operational excellence, service reliability, documentation quality, and customer-focused support.
• Ability to work independently while contributing to cross-functional teams and organizational objectives.
• Attention to detail, accountability, accuracy, and continuous learning.
• Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States and should not require, now or in the future, sponsorship for employment visa status (e.g., H-1B).

Technologies

• Modern cloud & data engineering
• Operational support services
• Research computing
• Kubernetes
• CI/CD
• GitOps
• Infrastructure-as-Code
• Cloud cost modeling
• Observability
• JupyterHub
• RStudio/Posit
• Airflow
• REDCap
• Stata
• Databricks
• Scaled Agile Frameworks (SAFe)
• SDLC
• AI-DLC
• DevSecOps
• Agile delivery
• Continuous integration/continuous deployment
• Version control
• Automated testing

Benefits

• Competitive base salary
• Generous paid time off policy
• Merit based annual increases
• Bonus opportunities
• Robust recognition program
• Competitive range of insurance plans (including health, dental, life, and short-term and long-term disability)
• Access to a retirement savings program such as a 401(k) plan
• Paid parental leave for all parents
• Financial assistance with adoption expenses or infertility treatments
• Financial reimbursement for education and developmental opportunities
• Employee assistance program

About the hiring group

• RTI International’s Platform Team is a strategic technology enablement group helping RTI business units deliver secure, scalable, and cost-effective digital solutions.
• Provides reusable platform patterns via modern cloud & data engineering and operational support services for research computing, analytics, application development, and data-intensive work streams.
• Partners with project & software teams, infrastructure teams, and compliance and security stakeholders to reduce one-off technology builds, improve delivery consistency, and accelerate time to market.
• Expanding shared environments, services, and operational capabilities supporting RTI projects and strategic initiatives.
• Shared capabilities include: research computing and analytics environments; Kubernetes-based application and platform services; secure data enclave and lakehouse architectures; CI/CD, GitOps, and Infrastructure-as-Code automation; cloud cost modeling and observability; and platform operations.
• Integrated tools include JupyterHub, RStudio/Posit, Airflow, REDCap, Stata, Databricks, and custom web applications.

Location and work setting

• Durham, NC (onsite)

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with cloud-hosted technology platforms used in scientific research, healthcare, and other public sector technology domains.
• Experience supporting security and compliance activities for regulated technology services, such as documenting and contributing to system security plans and authorization packages, coordinating evidence collection and audit requests, and tracking remediation of findings in environments aligned to FISMA Low/Moderate, HIPAA, or similar regulatory frameworks.