Sr. Principal Product Owner

Company Description

Blend360 is an acclaimed, forward-thinking Data, Digital Marketing, & AI Solutions Company, dedicated to fueling remarkable outcomes for our Fortune 500 clients. Our trajectory is one of continuous expansion, emerging at the crossroads of cutting-edge analytics, data proficiency, technology, and digital marketing excellence.  

Job Description

We are seeking a Senior Principal Product Owner to support our Fortune 100 financial services client’s digital transformation initiatives.  This role will play a vital role in supporting technological advancements and product implementations across the organization.

The Senior Principal Product Owner is responsible for the identification, implementation, and optimization of AdTech properties, which are the core within the company’s digital advertising efforts. Working with Marketing, Analytics, Engineering, and third-party agency partners, this individual will determine strategic direction, prioritization, and timeline delivery of AdTech products that meet requests from stakeholders and customers.  This high-profile position requires a fundamental understanding of the digital advertising space and AdTech ecosystems.  Financial category experience is preferred.

The Details:

• Location: Remote in U.S. (Chicago area preferred)
• Duration: Approximately a 6-month consulting role via Blend360 with the goal of conversion to hire
• Benefits: We do offer benefits to our full-time consultants, including Health, Vision, Dental, 401K plan, Life Insurance, Employee Assistance Programs, and an incredibly supportive team cheering you on!

What you’ll do:

• Develop and maintain product vision by collaborating with stakeholders on key product considerations and align with product vision, features, and roadmap to support business unit goals. 
• Leverage customer insights, feedback, financials, compliance, and risk data to define product features and roadmap in partnership with other SMEs and potentially grow existing and/or build new product portfolios through new value-added and enhanced customer experiences.
• Lead design, development, and implementation of new product strategies.  Work cross-functionally to manage shared goals and priorities.
• Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for the product family and ensure alignment with senior leadership.  Define and create prototypes (e.g., MVPs, POC, etc.) based on customer feedback to test, learn, and validate ideas before committing to larger scale development.
• Synchronize and align with Product Family Product Owners on prioritization and delivery to maximize Product Family Value.  Define product family MVPs, prioritizing and accepting priorities in partnership with POs and architects.
• At the family level: Responsible for definition, guidance, and execution of product-related activities for a particular portfolio through the entirety of product lifecycle, from strategy and roadmap definition to development and market readiness.  Set business objectives for the product development process and oversee execution, internal or external, as necessary.  
• Validate user story acceptance criteria.  Ensure appropriate testing frameworks for product features (e.g., market testing, functional performance, etc.).  Work with Data Stewards in their respective LOBs to ensure the required data quality controls are identified and implemented. Inspect and evaluate product progress through each iteration. 
• Identify sources; monitor, analyze, test, and interpret key product performance metrics including financials, network volumes, key statistics, internal/external customer feedback trends, industry trends, research findings, and competitive innovations.  Develop and communicate findings; make strategic and tactical recommendations for performance improvements throughout the product lifecycle.
• Provide mentoring, fill in business and/or technical knowledge gaps, etc.  Negotiate and influence others across shared services and product teams across product families.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop and execute go-to-market strategies.
• Partner with business technology to outline needed technical features that are required to continuously optimize system components and underline infrastructure maintenance.
• Build a culture of accountability and ownership by empowering the product team to make decisions as close to the work as possible.  Serve as business lead on cross-functional teams and assist in managing dependencies with other teams’ functions while identifying, building, and managing strategic partnership across different product teams.  This includes collaborating to develop or support efforts of go-to-market strategies.  Provide vision and direction to a team.
• Coach team to be able to identify, manage, and escalate risk, and effectively manage risk.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Engineering, Business Administration & Management, Economics, Finance, Mathematics, Statistics, or related field.
• 8 years of experience in Product Management or Engineering role
• Prior experience in Financial Services or Tech Industry
• In lieu of a degree, 10 years of experience in Product Management or Engineering role within the Financial Services or Tech Industry

Preferred Qualifications:

• The ideal candidate has 3 years of hands-on experience in the use and implementation of AdTech solutions, ideally with clean room capabilities for the purposes of audience enablement and digital media measurement.
• 8 years professional experience in providing AdTech/MarTech support for advertising, digital marketing, media planning etc.
• Knowledge of digital media campaign activation and AdTech ecosystem. As an example, experience with DSPs (e.g., DV360, The Trade Desk), DMPs (e.g., Adobe Audience Manager), Social Network Ad Managers (Meta, Snap, TikTok), Clean room solutions (e.g., Amazon Marketing Cloud, Habu), and Data Onboarding (e.g., LiveRamp).
• Has interacted with media and marketing partners and understands their needs that can be translated into solutions.
• Can gather requirements and work with Engineering teams (internal and external) to deliver solutions.

Additional Information

The starting pay range for this role is $60.00 - $65.00 per hour. Actual compensation within the range will be dependent on several factors including but not limited to relevant experience, skills, certifications, training, and location. It is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range and determining factors for compensation are considered for each individual circumstance. BLEND360 also offers a competitive benefits program to meet the health and financial well-being of our team and their families. You can look forward to a range of benefits including medical, dental, vision, 401K, PTO, commuter benefits, spending accounts, life insurance, disability coverage, and EAPs.

A diverse workforce is a strong workforce
To deliver growth at BLEND360 and for our clients, we believe as a Talent Solutions Company, we have a responsibility and unique opportunity to positively impact the workforce. Diversity has played a critical role in our history, our growth, and continues to have a profound impact on our success.  We are determined to have equality in the workplace, within our team and as an extension of our clients’ team.

BLEND360 is an equal opportunity employer.