Product Owner

Overview:

Position:  Product Owner  - API Services  - Lead Processing

Salary:  $110 - 130K/yr d.o.e.

Location: Remote - hybrid if 31 miles from Tustin, CA or Austin, TX. 2 days on-site.

Overview:

The Product Owner partners with our product managers to assess value, develop cases and prioritize stories to ensure work focuses on those with maximum value that are aligned with product strategy. 

This role will focus on building a scalable Lead Ingestion platform that is part of the larger API services platform that New American Funding is building. This will involve understanding the various use cases for the APIs to ensure these APIs can be used and integrated well by various platforms, applications, websites within the NAF ecosystem and by 3^rd party vendors and partners that work with NAF.

For this role, the focus is on execution and collaboration with the development team and stakeholders. The Product Owner is responsible for translating strategic direction/feature roadmap into actionable user stories and ensuring alignment with the product vision.

1. Discovery Phase:

• Collaborate with stakeholders to gather requirements.
• Conduct competitive analysis and market research.
• Understand customer needs and pain points.
• Validate hypotheses through user interviews or early prototypes.

1. Planning Phase:

• Create and maintain a product backlog, ensuring it reflects business priorities.
• Write clear, concise user stories with acceptance criteria.
• Prioritize features based on value, risk, and dependencies.
• Work closely with UX/UI designers to align on user experience (as necessary).
• Participate in sprint planning to clarify requirements and unblock the development team.

1. Development Phase:

• Collaborate daily with the development team to refine the product backlog.
• Ensure alignment between the development team and the business goals.
• Make real-time decisions about scope changes or prioritization.
• Review and accept completed stories or features as part of sprint reviews.
• Track and report on progress towards sprint and release goals.
• Articulate a clear Sprint goal for every sprint.
• Partner with Scrum Master and Engineering to help drive team improvements.
• Build and maintain a running 2-3 sprints worth of work.
• Monitor and evaluate product progress and ensure that the product delivery plan is up to date.

1. Release Phase:

• Assist in user acceptance testing and ensure product readiness for launch.
• Collaborate with marketing, support, and other departments for a smooth launch.
• Collect post-launch feedback and work on hotfixes if required.

1. Post-Release:

• Gather user feedback and prioritize fixes or feature improvements.
• Track product metrics and KPIs to assess performance.

Focus Areas:

• Tactical execution.
• Communication with cross-functional teams.
• Efficient backlog management.
• Customer feedback loops.
• Partner with other Product Owners to grow organizational capability and maturity.
• Assist with QA when needed.
• May take on Product Management activities on smaller or newer efforts at times.
• Ability to grow in business domain knowledge and awareness.
• Process centric and seeks to help mature organizational processes.

1. Bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems, Computer Science, or Engineering or equivalent and at least five years’ experience in managing or owning custom developed products.
2. Strong background and experience working with APIs and backend services.
3. Hands on Agile Experience as a Product Owner.
4. Good organizational skills.
5. Strong Communication skills and team mentality.
6. Strong Technical and delivery acumen with solid understanding of software development and Product Lifecycle management.
7. 5+ experience in a product owner or equivalent role

Work Authorization: Must be able to verify identity and employment eligibility to work in the U.S.

Other Duties: This job profile is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of job duties and responsibilities, as one may perform additional related duties as assigned in order to meet the needs of the organization.

Physical Demands: The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Must be able to lift up to ten pounds. Primary functions require sufficient physical ability and mobility to work in an office setting; to stand or sit for prolonged periods of time; to occasionally stoop, bend, kneel, crouch, reach, and twist; to lift, carry, push, and/or pull light to moderate amounts of weight; to operate office equipment requiring repetitive hand movement and fine coordination including use of a keyboard; and to verbally communicate to exchange information. VISION: See in the normal visual range with or without correction. HEARING: Hear in the normal audio range with or without correction.

[EOE/M/F/D/V. Drug-free workplace.]

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