Title:  Senior Specialist Product Owner

Job Title: Senior Specialist Product Owner

Job Number: 27732

Job Location: Nashville, TN

Schedule: 9/80

Job Description: 

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Product Owner to join our team. The successful candidate will support the Product Manager, product development team, and both internal and external customers. The Product Owner will be responsible for defining, scoping and planning product backlog items to reach roadmap and strategic objective targets. The PO will work closely with stakeholders and the product team to break product objective into work items, as part of the Agile software development lifecycle.  The PO will work closely with the Product Manager, Scrum Master and product team to plan product releases/increments to reach product goals. The PO will prioritize and plan work items into sprints, accept the sprint work when completed, and track the velocity and value delivered across the release or increment of the product roadmap. The Product Owner will produce and maintain a product release/increment plan, capturing completion toward product goals. The PO will be responsible for effectively communicating release progress and status to stakeholders, both internal and external.

Essential Duties and Responsiblities:

•   Supports the development of the product roadmap; owns the development of the release plan

•   Breaks down feature requests, product goals, requirements and strategic objectives into prioritizable work items. Works directly with customers and stakeholders to understand the intent of requirements and feature requests.

•   Prioritizes features for development to ensure product delivery schedules are met or exceeded

•   Tracks project deliveries, analyzes business metrics, and reports status of feature/product completion.

•   Uses strong communication skills (written, verbal, visual) to effectively bridge the knowledge gaps between the members of the team, technical and non-technical. Communicates the status of the product to customers and stakeholders, as well as ensures development team members understand the customer requirements and features to be developed.

•   Primary contributor to user story writing and backlog development.

•   Develops, maintains and prioritizes a healthy backlog using Agile Scrum practices. Ensures development team has appropriate amount of work prioritized for sprint backlogs and sets clear vision and goals for the sprint.

•   Participates in team activities and events: backlog refinemet, team stand-up, sprint demonstration, sprint planning. Strong focus on collaboration to build a complete understanding of the product objective and to define a clear vision for the team to execute toward.

•   Assist in writing and reviewing technical documentation that will be delivered as part of a product delivery.

•   Communicates with stakeholders at varying technical and leadership levels. Coordinates directly with customers and contract officials, as well as give presentations and briefs of product status, including existing and new/future product features.

•   Support maintenance of the SIL (Software Integration Lab) and able to effectively demonstrate the product to stakeholders at all level of an organization, both internal and external.

•   Accepts the work of the development team each sprint, ensuring delivered product is operating in accordance with the product goals/objectives.

•   Strong leadership skills, and able to lead through adversity and conflict.

Job Knowledge, skills and abilities:

• Proactive, self-starter with excellent project management skills and ability to manage multiple tasks effectively
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to engage, influence, and inspire partners and stakeholders to drive collaboration and alignment
• Strong presentation skills
• Strong understanding of requirements of engineering practices for solicitation of information and derivation of requirements
• Good critical thinking and analytical skills
• Good customer relations skills and the ability to build relationships
• Capable of effective time management
• Demonstrate sound judgment and strong reasoning skills as well as good analytical and problem-solving abilities
• Ability to quickly learn and adapt to a changing environment
• Ability to utilize multiple desktop publishing and still-image editing programs
• Highly proficient grammatical skills
• Ability to prioritize and organize tasks and assignments

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in a technology or business related field with 6 years minimum prior work experience
• Graduate Degree and a minimum of 4 years of prior related experience. 

OR

• 10 years of prior experience working as a Business Analyst, Engineer or experience with Department of Defense customers, hardware and software integration, or installation/maintenance of avionics systems
• Proven background of delivering quality requirements and seeing deliverables through to completion

Work Environment and Physical Demands:

• Work performed in an office environment; customer facility; System Integration Laboratory (SIL); in ground vehicles or in secure facilities with/without environmental control
• Duties may require being on call periodically and working outside of normal working hours (evenings, weekends, and holidays)
• Ability to independently lift 25 lbs.

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