Product Owner

WorkWave is seeking a highly motivated, experienced and enthusiastic Product Owner to collaborate with a cross functional team on sales and marketing SAAS products. In the Agile Scrum software development environment, the Product Owner is a key stakeholder. The Product Owner works closely with Product Management to translate a vision for the product and is responsible for communicating that vision to the scrum team. The Product Owner works with product management, customers, sales, marketing and development teams to ensure that business, quality and functional goals are met with each product release. 
You’ll be responsible for executing the product roadmap. This includes defining requirements, writing user stories, working with Product Management to prioritize initiatives, and driving scalability and other investments for the product.  An understanding of user centered design, empathy for end users of the product and the ability to effectively gather customer pain points and identify solutions is absolutely critical.  Deep product knowledge must be developed in order to serve as the product expert for all stakeholders.

WHAT YOU’LL DO:

• Collaborate with product management, product marketing, support and sales to translate business requirements into user stories for the development teams to implement
• Develop and maintain an appropriately prioritized backlog of user stories for implementation
• Work with product management and technical leads to determine scope and priorities for product development cycles
• Work with development teams to ensure understanding of the vision for the product in order to implement great design features for our customers  
• Develop appropriately detailed specifications for product features to enable clear understanding by the development teams
• Interview customers and work with UI/UX to utilize user testing to gather and validate requirements
• Evaluate and validate the effort estimates for user stories and features with development teams
• Inspire and motivate development teams to deliver innovative and exciting solutions with an appropriate sense of urgency
• Act as an ambassador for the product internally and externally, and as the primary technical contact for queries related to the product
• Bridge the gap between our technical needs and the requirements of our users including providing detailed product requirements for implementation of changes to our systems
• Work with key stakeholders across the company to ensure successful product releases
• Work hand-in-hand with Support and QA teams to collect and classify defects, prioritize appropriately and ensure expected functionality is fully understood

ADDITIONAL TASKS:

• Conducting market analysis and competitive research to inform competitive landscape and strategic direction
• Visiting & collaborating with existing customers to observe how they use WW products today and identifying key areas of development focus
• Assuming a hands-on role for managing the development and improvement of WW products through the entire product development lifecycle process
• Working closely with technical counterparts, development teams, and customer success representatives
• Managing the launch process for new features and functionality
• Developing internal and external product marketing materials to communicate the value of products
• Measuring and reporting detailed operational metrics that can be used as a management tool to predict future results and to assess the success of all product

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher – or the equivalent, preferably in relevant technical fields such as Computer Science, Analytics, etc.
• 2+ years of experience as a product owner in an Agile software development environment, ideally in a high growth SaaS company
• Familiarity with product development tools including Trello,  Jira, and Confluence (Atlassian)
• Expertise communicating progress at each phase of development as appropriate, including published roadmaps, requirements and other information
• High degree of both technical expertise and business acumen
• Strong results-orientation combined with excellent judgment and problem-solving skills
• Demonstrated success launching excellent products; comprehensive understanding of developing a product and bringing it to the market
• Demonstration of outstanding written and verbal communication skills internally and externally, across teams and functions
• Demonstration of attention to detail, strong organization and planning skills

WHAT WOULD ALSO BE AWESOME:

• A highly organized individual who is seasoned in the art and science of building and executing upon a strategy
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to grasp the nuances o