Product Owner

Babel Street is currently seeking a Product Owner for our DoD team.  The Product Owner is a crucial role responsible for organizing, prioritizing, and assessing work for our development team, ensuring that our products align with the team and government’s vision and meet customer expectations. You will be the primary for defining our product vision, roadmap, and growth opportunities- collaborating between internal and external contacts to align our product with strategic goals. 

What you will do:

• Collaborate between Product Manager and Developers:
  • Communicate clearly: The Product Owner must act as a bridge between the Government Product Manager, the Development Team Lead, and Senior Management. 
  • Navigate Bureaucracy and Regulations: The PO will face a rule-bound environment and must navigate through red tape, politics, and bureaucracy in a way that ensures the development process aligns with transparency and fair process.
  • Act as an Advocate for Development Team: The PO communicates effectively with senior managers and end users, acting as an advocate for the development team by promoting the project, ensuring that the team's efforts are recognized and supported, and raising concerns early if the project veers off target.
  • Maintain Focus and Prioritization: The PO may have to make on-the-spot lower-level decisions that do not require escalation, ensuring that the development team remains focused on the most critical tasks and that the project stays on track by prioritizing features and user stories based on the product vision and product manager needs. 
• Product Development and Feature Backlog: 
  • Communicate with Product Manager:  Be the link between the Government Product Manager and the Development Team Lead to gather insights on feature requests, user needs, and end goals. A collaborative approach ensures that the product backlog reflects a comprehensive understanding of the vision.
  • Maintain an Accurate Backlog: Regularly update the product backlog so it remains relevant and focused in delivering the most valuable functionalities within a set timeframe.
  • Roadmap Integration: Integrate feature ideas or broader initiatives into a roadmap, while keeping the product backlog focused on immediate development tasks. This approach provides a clear, strategic overview of long-term visions alongside a manageable list of immediate priorities.
  • Review and Adjust: Regularly review and adjust the product backlog based on feedback from stakeholders and the evolving needs of the product.
  • Communicate Priorities: Clearly communicate the prioritized backlog to the development team and other stakeholders to ensure everyone is aligned on the product's direction and understands the rationale behind the chosen priorities. 
•  Create Agile Ceremonies: 
  • Facilitate Sprint Planning Meetings: The PO is responsible for preparing and leading sprint planning meetings, where the team collaborates to define the sprint goals and select items from the product backlog to work on during the sprint by understanding the product vision, prioritizing backlog items, and ensuring the team has a clear understanding of what needs to be achieved.
  • Organize Sprint Reviews and Demos: The PO organizes sprint review meetings, where the team presents the work completed during the sprint to the product manager, stakeholders, and senior management by ensuring that the product functionality, user experience, and business value are showcased effectively, and that the team is prepared to present with confidence.
  • Engage with Stakeholders: The PO engages with various stakeholders, including customers, business managers, and the development team, to gather requirements, feedback, and ensure the product meets user needs and business objectives. This helps in reducing uncertainty and maintaining clarity around the product vision. 
• Writing Test Scripts: 
  • Understand User Requirements: The PO must have a deep understanding of the user requirements and the product's functionality to write effective test scripts by ensuring that the test scripts accurately reflect the user stories and acceptance criteria defined in the product backlog.
  • Ensure Test Coverage: The PO is responsible for ensuring that the test scripts cover all aspects of the product's functionality by writing test scripts that cover both the expected and unexpected use cases.
  • Validate Product Features: The PO uses test scripts to validate that the product features meet the defined acceptance criteria by executing the test scripts and reviewing the results to confirm that the product behaves as expected.  

 What you’ll need succeed: 

• Experience in Product Development 
• Experience in DoD contracts 
• Strong communication and leadership skills to effectively communicate and manage conflicting needs between stakeholders and developers 
• Analytical and problem-solving skills for mitigating roadblocks to achieving sprint/release goals 

Education & Experience: 

• Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline preferred 
• Experience as a Product Owner or similar role in product management 
• Knowledge of software development and technologies  

Job Essentials: 

• Able to use project management tools like Jira and Confluence 
• TS/SCI Clearance preferred, ability to obtain a TS/ SCI Clearance mandatory 
• Understanding of MS Office 
• Excellent listening and communication skills are required