Sr. Product Owner

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, through the Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) organization, delivers a suite of payments services to financial institutions. This Sr. Product Owner role focuses on translating business needs into prioritized product requirements and partnering with an Agile team to drive customer and stakeholder outcomes across FRFS products and services.

In this onsite, full-time position in Kansas City, MO, you will bridge business and technology by shaping epics and features into user stories, defining acceptance criteria, and collaborating with architecture, engineering, and quality assurance to ensure the right customer problem is solved.

Role Overview

• Translate business wants and needs into prioritized requirements for FRFS products and services
• Lead and support an Agile team in delivering customer and stakeholder outcomes
• Act as a subject matter expert representing the business and clarifying questions that arise from the Agile team

Key Responsibilities

• Continuously learn about the customer, their business needs, and how the product contributes to desired outcomes
• Coordinate with the Lead Product Owner and Product Management to communicate and reinforce product vision, goals, and roadmap through features and stories
• Maintain enough business and technical understanding to participate in team discussions
• Work closely with architecture, engineering, and quality assurance to ensure solutions address the right customer problem
• Gather requirements by communicating with technical and business stakeholders and translate them into technical specifications when needed
• Decompose and prioritize epics and features into user stories and define detailed test acceptance criteria
• Prioritize technology-driven and risk-remediation requirements to prevent technical debt accumulation and vulnerabilities
• Support application development with enabler stories
• Determine whether stories meet success criteria and accept work when requirements are satisfied
• Help analyze defects and enhancements to determine severity, priority, and overall validity
• Contribute to discussions on risks, dependencies, issues, and schedule updates as needed
• Ensure agreement on actions to address dependencies between broader FRFS teams
• Present working software to stakeholders at team and system demos
• Prepare product proposals and messaging for product forums, including presentations to Group-level governance forums
• Use data and feedback to make informed decisions and continuously improve the product
• Monitor product-specific OKRs and manage to targets with stakeholders
• Contribute to refining roles and responsibilities for this position, identifying process improvements and sharing with peers
• Actively promote Agile behaviors across business, technology, and FRFS

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, or another technical related field, or equivalent work experience
• Typically 7-10 years of related experience
• Ability to bridge business and IT through rapport-building and understanding
• Strong understanding of business requirement development and analysis, including use cases, functional specifications, and user interface specifications
• Effective problem-solving skills, including identifying challenges, brainstorming ideas, and collaborating with cross-functional teams
• Ability to work independently with minimal oversight, manage multiple deliverables, and take ownership of issue resolution and high-quality delivery
• Demonstrated teamwork, leadership, critical thinking, multitasking, and time management in a highly matrixed organization
• Capacity to develop deep subject matter expertise across specific products and their broader ecosystem to drive enhancements and influence decision making
• Ability to understand and resolve blockers and delivery risks quickly without escalation outside product scope
• Ability to evaluate competing priorities across technology and business areas, articulate options, and use influence to define resolutions across product sets with payment interdependencies
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences
• Certified Product Owner in Scrum or SAFe, preferably Advanced level, and recent JIRA experience are highly desirable
• Background in financial services industry with web applications in a cloud environment

Technologies and Tools

• FedLine Solutions, Fedwire Funds and Securities, National Settlement Service (NSS), FedCash, FedACH, Check Services, FedNow Service
• JIRA, Scrum, SAFe

Company Context

FRFS delivers payments services to financial institutions via FedLine Solutions, Fedwire Funds and Securities, the National Settlement Service (NSS), FedCash, FedACH, Check Services, and the FedNow Service. FRFS is structured as a fully integrated organization with groups dedicated to customer experience, operations, technology, product, and customer/industry management, enterprise services, payments system improvement, and ongoing growth and development of the FedNow instant payment service.

Location: Kansas City, MO (onsite)
Schedule: Full time
Employment: Regular
Exempt: Yes
Category: Project/Product Management Family Group
Work shift: First (United States of America)