JOB SUMMARY

The CATO Product Specialist is a digital product expert for the entirety of the CATO applications portfolio – which includes HRIS like applications for shipboard team members – from recruitment, to travel, scheduling, onboarding and shipboard experience. The product specialist contributes to the entire lifecycle of the digital product, from inception, to launch and continues to analyse feedback to identify new opportunities for the platform. With an integrated knowledge of the application features, functionality, back-end processes, end points and data schemas – the specialist collects or provides requirements for enhancements to the system. As a specialist quality of the design for the projects within product roadmap, by contributing to the roadmap for system admin features, analyzing all features for opportunities or impact to current functionality and guiding end users and stakeholder’s requirements in a direction that will provide value and minimize risk. This role is the bridge between the support team, end users, product and project teams – to provide SME guidance through product design & architecture in all activities for systems initiatives.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Requirements Gathering – Work with stakeholders to collect requirements and collaborate with UX team on UX designs. During the requirements phase, the specialist is an integral chair in the discussions with stakeholders. The business analysts will utilize the specialist to provide key insights and provide design direction in discussions with business end users.
• Roadmap Creation & Prioritization – Use project management tools to maintain project roadmap by prioritizing, driving and tracking the projects. Use product management methodology to score and weigh each project in order to prioritize effectively and guide leadership in the release schedule and keep the project team apprised of what projects need to be worked on.
• Backlog Management – Intake feature requests from end users and stakeholders, analyze backlog for opportunities and prioritize placement of necessary features onto the roadmap. Work with the support team to prioritize and track incoming user stories and bug tickets as a result of production issues.
• Release Management - As a SME, this role contributes to the change management strategy, working with the manager of shipboard applications to craft communications, build release schedules, create user guide content and provide trainings to shoreside/shipboard users and other Crew.
• Level 3 End User Support - As a SME, this role also provides L3 support to the CATO Support Analysts in order to triage incoming issues from end users, create and track incident tickets with IT as needed.
• User Acceptance Testing L2 – Participate Level 2 UAT services for the support analysts and test analysts. For larger projects, this role will perform UAT services, by reviewing the test scripts created by the test analysts and support analysts to identify gaps and make recommendations. This role will also help in triaging issues reported in issues log from the UAT and assist in tracking and reporting on the UAT progress as needed.
• Training – Develop Training plans, create training materials such as user guides, videos, recordings as needed for end users. Trainings are for major releases or can be ad-hoc based on user needs. This role liaises with the support team to understand issues users are having with the system in order to schedule trainings and release user materials.
• Communications & Change Management - As a SME, this role provides launch and on-going training and maintains the product knowledge documentation and communications. The specialist will also assist the Manager, Shipboard Applications in creating project plans, release plans / organizational change management and communications strategy.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s Degree Social Sciences, Marketing & Design, Systems & Engineering or other.
• Minimum 3-5 years in Crew operations or HRIS applications
• O365, Excel, PPT, Azure DevOps
• 3 years in Product/Project management experience
• Master’s degree preferred
• Understanding and experience in working with PMLC, SDLC, Agile & Scrum Methodology. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, work collaboratively across teams