Product Owner

Job Title: Product Owner
Location: his is a HYBRID position requiring 2 in-office days at local client office per week
Contract: 6+ Months

A Product Owner (PO) for corporate finance products owns the day-to-day delivery of finance capabilities within a digital product team, translating business outcomes into a prioritized product backlog and clear user stories. The PO partners with Finance stakeholders, Product Management, Engineering, and Risk/Compliance to refine requirements, define acceptance criteria, manage dependencies, support testing and release readiness, and ensure delivered features improve finance processes, controls, and reporting.
 
Summary:
We are seeking experienced Product Owner(s) to join the Corporate Finance Portfolio at a large wealth management client to translate product vision into an actionable backlog and lead day-to-day delivery of innovative, industry-leading Digital Finance capabilities across Core Finance, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Expenditure Management, Branch Economics, Financial Advisor compensation, and Financial Advisor teaming/partnerships.
 
What you will be doing
Own and manage the product backlog for assigned product areas and value streams within the Digital Finance Portfolio, acting as the day-to-day owner of related capabilities and outcomes. Translate portfolio/product strategy into features, and user stories with clear acceptance criteria, and prioritize work to align with firm objectives, business needs, and market trends.
 
Identify and size opportunities in partnership with stakeholders; support business case development by documenting problem statements, expected value, assumptions, dependencies, and risks. Define and socialize success metrics for backlog items, review outcomes post-release, and continuously refine priorities based on data and stakeholder feedback.
 
Drive clarity, decisions, and acceptance to enable delivery of complex enhancements and new capabilities by driving requirements clarity, scope tradeoffs, and release readiness to meet evolving needs across Branch teams, Financial Advisors, and Financial Analysts.
 Partner with cross-functional teams (technology, operations, business, compliance, legal, risk) to plan and execute increments, improve usability and efficiency, remove blockers, and ensure high-quality outcomes through effective testing and acceptance
 Own the Team Product Backlog refinement and prioritization by ensuring backlog is refined, sized, dependency-aware.
Confirm acceptance criteria, NFRs, and control requirements for planned scope.
 Own the Team Product Backlog for assigned Digital Finance capabilities; prioritize, refine, and maintain readiness (stories, defects, enablers) aligned to PI Objectives and firm goals.
 Partner with Product Management to translate portfolio/product strategy into features and stories; define clear acceptance criteria, NFRs, and control/audit requirements.
Drive discovery and sizing inputs with stakeholders; document problem statements, value hypotheses, assumptions, dependencies, and risks; support business case materials and prioritization decisions.
Define and socialize success metrics; validate outcomes post-release using data and stakeholder feedback; continuously adjust backlog priorities.
Enable sprint and PI execution by setting Sprint Goals, making scope tradeoffs, resolving requirement ambiguities quickly, and maintaining a decision log.
Coordinate cross-functional alignment (technology, operations, compliance, legal, risk) to ensure testability, acceptance, release readiness, and operational handoffs.
Support PI Planning by presenting/refining team scope, negotiating dependencies, and drafting team PI Objective inputs and capacity-based scope proposals.
Translate product intent into a clear Sprint Goal and top outcomes (what success looks like)
Provide transparent status, risks, and impediments to Agile Release Train (ART) stakeholders and product leadership, with explicit visibility into controls and dependencies.
 Communicate backlog priorities, delivery progress, risks and key scope decisions to ART stakeholders and Product leadership, ensuring transparency on controls, dependencies, and delivery risks/impediments across the Sprints,
Program Increments, and release plan.
Ensure backlog readiness for sprints, drive continuous improvements, align stakeholders, manage scope changes, close the loops from spring review feedbacks, convert learnings to backlog updates
 Lead backlog refinement with engineers and business analysts; align with Technical Lead/Architect on solution constraints, sequencing, and technical enablers
 
Required Skills & Qualifications (Product Owner)
Bachelor’s degree (Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field); MBA/advanced degree preferred.
 5+ years of experience as a Product Owner (or closely related roles such as Product Delivery Manager / Business Analyst) delivering digital products (Corporate Finance preferred)
Prior experience owning and managing a product backlog for one or more Agile teams, including prioritization, refinement, and release planning.
Strong analytical, problem-solving, and organizational skills; able to break down ambiguous problems into clear epics, features, and user stories.
Proven ability to translate product goals into well-defined user stories, acceptance criteria, and Definition of Done/Ready to support end-to-end delivery.
Ability to define and track outcome and delivery metrics (e.g., adoption, usability, cycle time, defects) and use insights to adjust priorities.
 Strong collaboration and influence without authority across stakeholders (business, engineering, operations, legal, compliance, risk).
Excellent communication and storytelling skills to simplify complexity, align stakeholders, and drive clarity for delivery decisions.
Strong decision-making skills: make timely trade-offs across customer value, business goals, technical feasibility, and regulated/financial services constraints.
 Practical experience working in Agile delivery (SAFe preferred; Scrum/Kanban), including participating in ceremonies and supporting the team through sprint execution.
Working knowledge of digital finance platforms/architecture and integrations; familiarity with technologies such as PeopleSoft, Oracle Fusion Cloud, Coupa, OneStream and/or Spring Boot microservices, (ability to partner effectively with engineers/architects).
Familiarity with product delivery and collaboration tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence, Aha!, Mural, Asana).
Good-to-Have Skills (Highly Desirable)
Strong customer advocacy and ability to represent user needs in backlog decisions and acceptance criteria.
Finance industry experience and comfort operating in regulated environments (risk, controls, compliance).
 Ability to balance technical constraints (architecture, dependencies, performance/non-functional requirements) with business objectives.
Comfort making decisions with incomplete information; “bias for action” in execution.
Strong negotiation and conflict resolution skills, especially around prioritization, scope, and dependency trade-offs.