Senior Product Owner

This is a contract position for a Senior Product Owner supporting a research-collaboration tooling initiative at the Federal Reserve Board. The role is based in Washington, DC and intended for long-term ongoing engagement.

Responsibilities

• Define product vision and priorities for research-collaboration tooling, elicited and validated directly with business stakeholders, architects, and technical subject-matter experts.
• Convert business and research-collaboration needs into clear, actionable technical specifications and user stories.
• Prioritize features and enhancements based on both business value and technical feasibility.
• Maintain requirements traceability from business need through to technical delivery.
• Maintain working knowledge of platforms relevant to external research collaboration-source-control and developer platforms, technical authoring and research-collaboration platforms, and file-collaboration and research-sharing platforms-sufficient to assess integration options and flag technical constraints early.
• Partner with engineering and platform architects to evaluate feasibility and integration approaches before decisions are finalized.
• Stay current on the research-collaboration tooling landscape as it evolves and re-scope the roadmap accordingly.
• Evaluate architectural decisions and technical tradeoffs with engineering and platform architects.
• Assess scalability and performance implications of product and tooling choices.
• Make informed decisions on technology stack and integration approaches.
• Serve as the primary translator between business stakeholders and DevSecOps engineering and platform leads.
• Communicate technical constraints, tradeoffs, and timelines to non-technical stakeholders in plain language.
• Communicate business priorities and external-collaborator needs to engineering teams in actionable terms.
• Apply fundamentals of project management, organization, and process mapping to keep product and requirements work on track.
• Maintain clear documentation of decisions, open questions, and requirement changes.
• Support planning and prioritization discussions with program leadership.

Qualifications

• Required

• Bachelor's degree in a related field, or equivalent experience.

• 10 or more years of experience in product ownership, technical business analysis, or a related role, ideally in a platform, tooling, or developer-collaboration context.

• Proven track record defining product vision and translating business and stakeholder needs into technical specifications and user stories.

• Experience working directly with business analysts, senior leadership, and engineers or architects to validate feasibility and make technology decisions.

• Working knowledge of source-control and developer-collaboration platforms (e.g., GitHub).

• Working knowledge of technical authoring and research-collaboration platforms (e.g., Overleaf).

• Working knowledge of file-collaboration and research-sharing platforms.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills; proven ability to translate between technical and non-technical audiences.

• Ability to manage competing priorities across multiple stakeholders.

• Familiarity with Agile delivery practices (Scrum or Kanban).

• Preferred

• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM), or equivalent certification.

• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor).

• Experience supporting a research-collaboration, academic-partnership, or external-stakeholder engagement effort.

• Federal government experience.

• Experience in a DevSecOps or platform engineering environment.