Data Product Owner

Kestra Private Wealth Services - Austin, TX

Full-time - Mid Level

Austin, TX

1,001-5,000 employees

About the position

Kestra Holdings is seeking a Data Product Owner who will play a crucial role in bridging the gap between business stakeholders and the development team. This position is essential for ensuring that the technical solutions align with Kestra's overarching business objectives. The ideal candidate will possess a strong understanding of product strategy and the end-to-end data and workflow of Kestra Financial. The Data Product Owner will be responsible for executing the product vision and strategy, effectively communicating this vision to scrum teams, and translating large initiatives into smaller, actionable tasks that can be delivered incrementally. This role requires a balance of strategic thinking, governance, and implementation skills, as well as the ability to facilitate productive conversations among various stakeholders, including executives, analysts, product teams, and external customers. In this position, the Data Product Owner will lead the grooming of user stories and acceptance criteria, ensuring that they are correctly defined and ready for implementation. They will prioritize features and enhancements in the product backlog based on commitments made during PI planning events and will facilitate scrum grooming sessions to maintain a healthy backlog. The Data Product Owner will also be responsible for delivering requirements artifacts, participating in design reviews, and ensuring that solutions effectively address program priorities while maintaining technical integrity. Additionally, they will document and communicate release notes to business stakeholders and provide bi-weekly status reports for the Product & Tech steering committee. The role requires a self-starter who embraces a culture of transparency and trust, thrives in a rapidly changing environment, and is committed to ongoing learning and self-improvement. The Data Product Owner will collaborate with cross-functional teams, leveraging diverse expertise to address ambiguity and ensure that the product meets the needs of all stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Execute product vision and strategy.
• Develop a deep understanding of Kestra's product strategy and the end-to-end data and workflow of Kestra Financial.
• Communicate and translate the product vision and strategy to the scrum teams.
• Translate the requirements of large initiatives into smaller, actionable pieces that can be delivered in increments and then work to allocate resources for each initiative.
• Ensure epics are effectively defined into stories and shovel-ready (sized) in time for the PI planning event.
• Lead breakout sessions in PI Planning events.
• Prioritize features and enhancements in the product backlog based on PI event commitments.
• Facilitate the scrum grooming session and maintain a healthy scrum team backlog.
• Own the grooming of user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Ensure the correctness of user stories' acceptance criteria and epics.
• Deliver requirements artifacts referenced by epics and user stories as needed (e.g., data requirements/data mapping, workflow diagrams, user persona, etc.).
• Participate in design reviews and confirm or challenge design decisions regarding meeting user experience and business objectives.
• Ensure solutions effectively address program priorities (features and enablers) while maintaining technical integrity.
• Manage unplanned work vs committed work.
• Document and communicate release notes to business stakeholders.
• Participate and monitor production deployment activities.
• Provide bi-weekly status reports for the Product & Tech steering committee.
• Act as primary liaison between stakeholders and the scrum team.
• Coordinate dependencies with other POs across a portfolio of applications and products.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in technology (in Computer/Software/Technology related subject) or business.
• Experience as a Product Owner on Agile teams, ideally with Microsoft Azure technologies.
• Strong business analysis and requirements gathering skill set.
• Ability to define clear and concise business requirements in Epics and Stories.
• Ability to facilitate business and/or technical decisions at a team and product level.
• Ability to remain flexible and open-minded in changing priorities, requirements, and circumstances.
• Capacity to analyze complex situations, identify patterns, and evaluate multiple perspectives to make sound decisions.
• Aptitude for breaking down significant, ambiguous problems into manageable components, defining clear objectives, and developing practical solutions.
• Skill in making timely, well-informed decisions based on available information, insights, and analysis.
• Experience working on projects that span multiple organizations and business units.
• Effective communication skills with the ability to align the organization on complex decisions.
• Proficiency in both verbal and written communication to articulate ideas, convey expectations, and align stakeholders.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, leverage diverse expertise, and foster a culture of cooperation to address ambiguity collectively.
• Ability to understand and empathize with various stakeholders' perspectives, concerns, and motivations, including customers, team members, and business partners.
• Self-starter who embraces a culture of transparency and trust and thrives in an environment of rapid change and growth.
• Commitment to ongoing learning, self-improvement, and skill development to stay updated on industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies.
• Strong technical skills in data structures, modeling, and data mining.
• Ability to create queries to validate and sign off on data deliverables.

Nice-to-haves

• Familiar with current best practices in diverse, relevant technologies, including containerization, microservices, automation CI/CD, Azure, and related cloud technologies.
• Ability to extract insights from data & identify patterns using data scripting languages such as SQL and Python.
• Have a strong foundation in data technologies such as data warehouses, databases, and data lakes.

Benefits

• Full health, vision, dental insurance.
• 401(k) plans along with a host of voluntary plans such as car insurance, legal services and more.