Technical Product Owner, Data Management & Operations

Cengage is seeking a Technical Product Owner for Data Management & Operations based in Ohio (onsite). In this role, you will partner with data engineering and data operations leaders to shape strategy and priorities, translate them into a portfolio of initiatives, and help deliver scalable, well-controlled data capabilities across the organization.

The position covers data governance and operational development, portfolio and program execution, and ongoing advancement of data workflows and the indicators used to measure success.

What you will do

• Collaborate with Data Management & Operations leadership to define functional strategy, priorities, roadmaps, and investment plans.
• Convert strategy into a consistent set of initiatives, capabilities, operational developments, and technology investments.
• Assess emerging business and technology needs to identify gaps, opportunities, and recommendations.
• Help create and maintain multi-year roadmaps.
• Provide leadership with portfolio health updates, including competing priorities, capacity constraints, dependencies, risks, and decisions needing attention.
• Serve as a liaison between business and technology leaders.
• Build a strong understanding of Cengage business strategies, processes, technology landscape, and data needs.
• Work with team members to frame business problems and desired outcomes.
• Translate advanced data concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Represent leadership in forums and decision-making discussions independently.
• Partner across business functions and technology organizations to enable scalable data capabilities.
• Champion adoption and continuous improvement of data management methods.
• Drive adoption of data quality practices and alignment with data governance policies, standards, and practices.
• Collaborate with technical teams to define clear business outcomes and requirements.
• Identify systemic gaps and opportunities across data processes, encouraging enterprise reuse and standardization.
• Support defining criteria for success for data capabilities and initiatives.
• Lead portfolio execution by coordinating initiatives and maintaining visibility into delivery progress.
• Ensure work entering delivery is understood, prioritized, and aligned with outcomes; make timely prioritization and tradeoff decisions.
• Provide product ownership and prioritization oversight for relevant backlogs.
• Work with other Technical Product Owners and technology leaders on cross-platform initiatives.
• Support productive delivery approaches, clarity, answerability, and continuous improvement.
• Use operational performance indicators to find systemic improvement opportunities, prioritizing initiatives that reduce operational burden, increase automation, and improve maintainability.
• Maintain balance across new capabilities, operational improvements, risk remediation, technical debt, and platform health.
• Provide leadership and coordination for significant cross-functional operational issues.
• Consistently advance Data Management & Operations workflows and indicators of success.

Qualifications

• Extensive background in technical product ownership, technology business collaboration, portfolio/program oversight, data management, data operations, business analysis, or a related technology role.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with data engineering teams and translating business and technical requirements into defined engineering assignments.
• Solid understanding of data engineering, including data pipelines, ETL/ELT, data integration, data modeling, data storage, APIs, data warehouses/lakes/lakehouses, cloud data platforms, and batch and/or real-time processing.
• Knowledge of data management areas including data quality, metadata, lineage, governance, security, access, and lifecycle management.
• Experience with operational elements of data platforms, including monitoring, reliability, incident management, performance, scalability, and service-level expectations.
• Proven ability to collaborate with senior leaders on strategy and translate it into actionable priorities.
• Experience representing a technology or data function with senior business and technology collaborators.
• Demonstrated experience managing sophisticated portfolios or roadmaps with multiple initiatives, collaborators, dependencies, competing priorities, and constrained capacity.
• Solid foundational knowledge of enterprise data management and data governance.
• Experience with enterprise data platforms and applications; Snowflake, SAP, Salesforce, or comparable technologies are preferred.
• Practical understanding of operational and analytical data modeling concepts.
• Strong analytical, systems-thinking, and problem-solving skills.
• Proven capability to understand technical architecture and engineering compromises.
• Experience working across Agile and other technology delivery practices.
• Familiarity with SQL and/or Python is a plus.
• Familiarity with DAMA-DMBOK and/or CDMP certification is preferred.
• Experience contributing to technology investment planning, arguments, vendor evaluations, capacity planning, or other portfolio-level investment decisions is preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Data Management, Business, or a similar field, or equivalent work experience.

Technologies

• ETL, ELT, APIs, data pipelines, data modeling, data warehouses, data lakes, lakehouses
• Cloud data platforms, Snowflake, SAP, Salesforce
• SQL, Python, DAMA-DMBOK, CDMP, Agile

Compensation

• Base pay range: $101,900.00 - $163,000.00 USD
• Individual base pay varies based on work schedule, qualifications, experience, internal equity, and geographic location.
• Incentive bonus: Discretionary incentive bonus program, with a 15% Annual: Individual Target.
• The full base pay range has been provided for this position.

Benefits

• Discretionary incentive bonus program (bonus target amount: 15% Annual: Individual Target).
• Comprehensive and rewarding Total Rewards package (click here to learn more about Total Rewards Philosophy).

Reasonable accommodations

• Cengage is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities, including during the job application process.
• If you require accommodation, contact [email protected].