Product Owner With Retail Domain

Role :: Technical Product Owner with MDM-Retail Domain

Location :: New York, NY-Onsite

Full-time

Job Description:

Master Data Management, Product Domain

Position Overview: The Technical Product Owner plays a key role in the implementation and maintenance of our core MDM capability. Core responsibilities include collaborating with business stakeholders and development teams, driving prioritization alignment, and creating the technical roadmap for the product domain within MDM. This team member also leverages cost benefit analysis to drive decision-making regarding short-term and long-term solutions, while staying adaptable in response to changing circumstances and feedback.

The ideal candidate is a strong strategic thinker, proficient at tailoring communication to different audiences, and has a deep understanding of the both the subject matter area and tooling required to support business objectives.

Functional Skills

• Able to communicate status, milestones, dependencies, risks, and considerations to a wide variety of audiences (including Executive), breaking down options with clear articulation of benefits and trade-offs to enable decision-making by stakeholders (both business and technical).
• Demonstrates a high sense of urgency to influence changes and drive delivery.
• Able to delegate and oversee multiple workstreams, including oversight on project management resources when required.
• Harmonizes business, technical, and vendor implementation milestones into a technical roadmap and drives alignment among the product team; works with PMO to incorporate into program roadmap.
• Able to decompose large-scale initiatives into phased deliverables, prioritizing up-front business benefits when required.
• Experience driving project discovery leveraging tenets that support long term scalability.
• Solutions-oriented mindset, with an appetite to problem solve collaboratively with enterprise IT partners.
• Meticulous attention to detail, with the belief that no detail is too small to be overlooked.
• Demonstrates ability to operate effectively in ambiguous situations.
• Recognizes opportunities to challenge the status quo and provides possible solutions.
• Independently implements frameworks that ensure mutual understanding and drives conflict resolution when required.
• Familiarity with core SAP modules relevant to the product domain.
• Familiarity with UI/UX concepts, and able to champion user-centric design principles and incorporate feedback from end-users into tool enhancements when required.
• Stays informed about industry trends, competitors, and emerging technologies in the Master Data Management space.

Technical Skills & Qualifications:

• 5 years’ experience as a product owner in luxury retail, CPG, or adjacent industry
• 7 years’ experience working within a software lifecycle development delivery model.
• 3 years’ hands-on experience working directly with SaaS vendors.
• Proficiency in understanding and articulating technical concepts related to SaaS architecture and integration.
• Familiarity with API integrations and data migration processes for SaaS applications.
• Solutions-oriented mindset, with an appetite to problem solve collaboratively.
• Ability to iterate through design in phases while optimizing alignment with business sponsors and key stakeholders.
• Proficiency with data management principles and best practices.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Ability to decompose complex challenges into logical options, and influence decision-making to drive alignment with technical roadmap.
• Experience driving discovery leveraging tenets that support long term scalability.
• Independent and creative analytical skills and the ability to clearly communicate ideas and confirm understanding.
• Successful track record of delivering outcomes within deadlines.
• Appetite to learn independently and gain deep understanding of complex topics.
• Strong production capabilities in PowerPoint, Excel, JIRA, Confluence, Visio, and project management platforms (e.g. MS Project, Smartsheets).
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field; Master's degree is a plus.
• Prior experience with master data management a plus.

Key Activities:

• Owns the creation and maintenance of artifacts required for technical design, including technical requirements documents, use cases, user stories, workflows, wireframes, and mockups.
• Owns and prioritizes the product backlog, ensuring alignment with business priorities and goals.
• Work closely with development teams to refine and elaborate on user stories, epics, and acceptance criteria.
• Influence leadership by providing solutions, phasing delivery as required to meet business objectives.
• Facilitates collaborative system and data design sessions with the user community, technical architecture resources, and development resources.
• Validates and sign offs on deliverables produced by technical teams throughout the development process on behalf of the IT Team.
• Oversees delivery by vendor and drives alignment to specifications outlined within design artifacts.
• Cross-Functional Engagement:
• Provides inputs to PMO to develop and maintain release plans.
• Drives solutions design alignment between technical teams, engaging in diplomatic escalation management if required.
• Collaborates with QA teams to define and execute test plans, ensuring high-quality product releases.
• Works with tech ops and other adjacent support teams to proactively identify opportunities for product optimizations.
• Keep adjacent IT functions aligned with technological roadmap both during implementation and as capability matures (e.g. enterprise architecture, security, tech ops, legal, etc.).
• Works as needed with EDM counterparts to craft effective communications, including status updates (short-term) and executive leadership roadmap updates (long-term).
• Establishes cross-functional understanding of project interdependencies and propose phased solutions when needed to deliver on business outcomes.