Associate Product Manager - Global Family Office (GFO)

About Northern Trust:

Northern Trust, a Fortune 500 company, is a globally recognized, award-winning financial institution that has been in continuous operation since 1889.  

Northern Trust is proud to provide innovative financial services and guidance to the world’s most successful individuals, families, and institutions by remaining true to our enduring principles of service, expertise, and integrity. With more than 130 years of financial experience and over 22,000 partners, we serve the world’s most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

Job Title: Associate Product Manager – Global Family Office (GFO)

About Global Family Office:

The Global Family & Private Investment Offices team (“GFO”) is a sales and client servicing group, within the Wealth Management division, specifically dedicated to supporting ultra-high net worth individuals and families (>$200m of investable assets), their charities and foundations. Given their wealth, these families act like institutions but require a personal and high touch approach, as well as the highest level of discretion. Our families wealth is mixed in nature with some being multi-generational inherited wealth and some being new entrepreneurial wealth. With the diversity of their investments, they often take a broad range of products and services from Northern Trust including asset servicing (custody), fiduciary, fund administration, investment management and banking/credit.

Job Description Summary:

Associate Product Managers are critical team members to ensuring smooth, optimized, and successful execution of new product features and enhancements. Associate Product Managers work closely with the Domain’s Product Manager, Engineering Manager and Scrum Teams as well as the Head of Product Management and GFO Business partners. Associate Product Managers are responsible for supporting their Domain’s features across the entire product development lifecycle – from product discovery & design, to story writing and working with engineering teams to conduct agile delivery, to release communication and management, to following up on product performance and maintenance.

Responsibilities:

The Associate Product Managers are critical team members to smooth, optimized, and successful execution of new product features and enhancements. Their responsibilities include:

• Collaborate closely with Product Manager and Development Team to deliver story quality, timing, assignment and volume to manage and prioritize Sprint backlogs

  • Decompose features for each MVP into high-level functional and non-functional stories

  • Write complete user stories and acceptance criteria which meet the Definition of Ready (DoR) and in a way that create best-in-class client- and partner-friendly omni-channel solutions

  • Cohost Product Backlog Refinement sessions

  • Prioritize stories within backlog with quant/qual data

  • Ensure user stories meet the Definition of Ready (DoR) before socializing to the Scrum Teams

  • Actively participate in release nights to validate and test new features and fixes in real-time.

• Lead Sprint Reviews with key stakeholders to secure buy-in, ensure timely follow-up and closure on feedback and action items

• Assist Product Manager to ensure effective Product Backlog management, grooming, tagging, and prioritization

• Assist Product Manager and Scrum Leads in maintaining a deliberate and on-track overarching Project Plan and Product Roadmap

• Engage and collaborate with Product Manager and others (Designer, Architect, Tech Lead, team members, etc.) as needed to understand scope to create product backlog items

• Ensure Product Backlog is transparent, visible, and understood by the Scrum Team

• Act as proxy Scrum Master to help address/resolve dependencies and risks

• Act as proxy Scrum Master for Scrum/PI Planning events (ie: daily scrum, sprint planning, PI planning, etc.)

• Assist with testing

• Help identify and escalate dependencies and risks

• Coordinate Release Management and communication

• Assist Product Manager and Product Leadership with other ad-hoc projects as needed (such as presentations, roadmaps, strategic research, etc.)

Key Characteristics:

• 3+ year experience with functional and technical story writing, acceptance criteria, refinement, and Agile practices preferred

• Superior analytical skills that will allow for detailed research when planning for new features/enhancements or looking into issues

• Good communicator, written and verbal