Technical Product Owner

Company: Assurant
Location: Vernon Hills
Posted on: September 17, 2021

Job Description:

In this role, you will be involved in every aspect of the product development process from discovery to delivery. You will work directly with designers, engineers, and stakeholders to ship meaningful products to millions of users around the world.

We are looking for candidates with an innovation mindset and full range of product development skills. Applicants must be able to push the boundaries of what is possible, while sharing in our healthy obsession of quality and simplicity.

• Work cross functionally with the business heads and delivery heads to execute the product strategy and roadmap
• Ensuring appropriate research and user testing is done before we build solutions
• Act as a subject matter expert to a cross-functional team on sprint planning, standups, retrospectives, and maintaining/controlling a backlog
• Writing effective use cases that address the problems and needs of our users
• Defining and instrumenting success criteria that is measured via qualitative and quantitative feedback
• Working with the Engineering Leads to manage technical debt and ensure timely delivery of projects
• Manage an effective and groomed backlog in ADO
• Copy Features and User Stories in ADO while maintaining links, attachments, and other relevant information
• Manage an effective and groomed backlog in ADO
• Query ADO to provide relevant information to dev team and stakeholders
• Clearly define Acceptance Criteria per feature
• Expert Agile Processes management (Scrum and Agile Hybrid) and Cross Functional communication
• Effective at managing a team with proactive talent development
• World Class Program & Project Execution, consistently hitting dates
• Efficient Delivery of Services (High Quality, Low cost) with continuous improvement
• Efficient and Effective Solution Delivery Process development with continuous improvement driven by data

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree preferably in business, IT, computer science, engineering, project management or another technology-focused field
• CSPO Certification or equivalent
• 3-5 years of experience in managing moderate to high complexity agile projects
• Proficiency in a wide range of tools and software
• Experience with 2 or more of the following tools: Sitefinity, Angular, Aha, Figma, Mural, Microsoft ADO
• Experience working in a highly collaborative environment
• Experience working closely in cross-disciplinary teams, including Business Analysts and Developers, to shepherd products through the complete SDLC
• Comprehensive understanding of the current trends and best practices in web, mobile, and emerging technologies
• Comfortable drafting comprehensive user stories, acceptance criteria, dependencies, predecessors, and ability to refine with the team to get ‘sprint ready’
• Very comfortable writing concise, clear, well thought out documentation without over-doing it
• Quickly learn and understand the product, technical constraints, team dynamics and organization’s culture
• Strong practical knowledge of agile methodologies, product development, information architecture, usability testing, and UX/UI
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment, acting quickly when required
• Multi-task – ability to work on more than one initiative at a time while keeping everything moving
• Sense of urgency – take ownership and drive solutions and obtain results, despite obstacles and challenges
• Ability to find creative ways to make progress without being pushed to do so
• Pride in work – ability to strike a balance between “perfect getting in the way of good” and providing “just enough” to keep things moving. Take pride in deliverables and outcomes
• Results oriented - ability to remain engaged and adding value. Seek out ways to expedite onboarding, focus on getting answers, ask questions, leverage communication tools, take ownership of responsibilities and deliver results
• Resourceful – leverage others, systems, internal tools, Internet, or any means necessary to find answers
• Experience in implementing CMS solutions and maximizing them for efficiency and reusability
• Familiarity with the technical architectural considerations involved when designing for complex systems

Preferred Qualifications:

• Excellent communication, presentation, interpersonal, and analytical skills including the ability to communicate complex concepts clearly across different audiences and varying levels of the organization
• An unwavering passion to advocate on behalf of our users
• Relentless desire for innovation, balanced with business needs and customer expectations
• Adept at leading software projects of varying sizes and degrees of complexity
• A strong work ethic, tireless focus on the customer, demonstrated experience delivering business needs, and experience creating simple and intuitive interfaces for complex applications across multiple sectors (ecommerce, B2B, B2B2C, D2C)
• A passionate advocate for the user, always putting their needs first
• Deep empathy for the user’s daily struggles and challenges and commitment to always provide the best experience possible

Keywords: Assurant, Arlington Heights , Technical Product Owner, Other , Vernon Hills, Illinois