Product Owner [W2 ONLY] [HYBRID IN CHARLOTTE NC]

Product Owner / Charlotte, NC / Contract-to-Hire

About our Customer:

Our DIRECT customer, a global leader in Food services industry is seeking a “Sr Product Owner” to work in Charlotte NC. It is a 3 Days on-site and 2-days off-site role.

About Role:

As a Product Owner, you will be responsible for ownership of Product Solutions, driving the development of custom applications, tools, and system integrations to provide valuable data insights. This role also involves managing team members, ensuring seamless collaboration and productivity.

• Responsibilities:
• Learn and Facilitate: Understand the complex business environment and facilitate projects and decisions across various user groups.
• Collaborate on Vision: Partner with the Product Manager to contribute to the product vision and strategic roadmap.
• Liaison Role: Function as the primary liaison between vendors, cross-functional teams, field implementation, and business stakeholders.
• Stakeholder Advice: Provide quality advice to stakeholders, ensuring thorough analysis, scope, and deliverables.
• Engagement and Validation: Actively engage with the team and customers to validate features, execute system and solution demos, and ensure the solution meets expectations and delivers business value.
• Backlog Management: Develop, scope, and define backlog items to ensure completeness to guide the product team.
• Product Development and Requirements Management: Oversight of development of stories and requirements definition, with active participation in the process.
• Agile Leadership: Lead agile teams to maintain and prioritize the product backlog, focusing on items with maximum value and alignment with business needs and product strategy.
• Project Coordination: Coordinate activities for multiple projects simultaneously.
• Change Management: Coordinate change and release management across product teams.
• Continuous Improvement: Assist the Product Manager in leading continuous improvement and best practice initiatives.
• Leadership Updates: Provide leadership with regular updates on team progress, risks, and other relevant information.
• Resource Management: Maintain a current view of people supply versus demand, aligning this to departmental needs.
• Liaison with Scrum Team: Ensure understanding of documented system requirements by functioning as the primary liaison between business and Scrum Team.
• Business Needs Interpretation: Work directly with business team members, developers, and the user community to identify and interpret business needs as application requirements.
• Product Understanding: Acquire an end-to-end understanding of the product’s features and flow, as well as data integrations with internal and external systems.
• Issue Resolution: Perform analysis and critical thinking to troubleshoot application-related issues and assist in their resolution.
• System Integration Testing: Coordinate with other product teams for system integration testing.
• Demo Preparation: Partner with Product Team Analysts to prepare for system and solution demos.
• Offshore Collaboration: Collaborate effectively with offshore teams, ensuring seamless communication and coordination across different time zones.

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 3 years of experience in an IT Product Ownership / Project Management role supporting custom application development.
• Prior experience as a systems/functional analyst in an application development environment, demonstrating a solid foundation in analyzing and interpreting business needs.
• Analytical Skills: Knowledge of database management systems (e.g., SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and experience writing basic SQL queries (including SELECT, JOIN, WHERE clauses) in a professional setting. Ability to collect, analyze, and interpret data to make informed decisions.
• Communication Skills: Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills to effectively communicate with business, customer, and technical audiences.
• Organizational Skills: Organized and meticulous with the ability to quickly shift priorities and manage, track, and complete deliverables in a timely manner.
• On-time Development: Consistently developed user stories, application requirements, and process flow diagrams on schedule.
• Agile Methodology: Planned, designed, and implemented efficient IT systems to support organizational functions following Agile methodology.
• Initiative and Collaboration: Highly inquisitive and energetic initiative-taker, able to work independently or collaboratively in a fast-paced team environment.
• Creative Problem-Solving: Demonstrated creative problem-solving skills to identify, communicate, and resolve systems issues.
• Priority Management: Managed conflicting priorities and gained consensus across multiple user groups.
• Customer Support: Committed and enthusiastic approach to supporting business customers and end users.
• Organizational Skills: Excellent organizational and time management skills.
• Relationship Building: Built excellent relationships at all levels of the organization.

DESIRED SKILLS AND TRAINING:

Agile Methodologies: Experience with Azure DevOps, Agile methodologies, and Scrum practices to manage product backlogs and sprints.