Product Owner

Metropolitan Transportation Authority - Austin, TX

Full-time

Austin, TX

Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation

About the position

The Product Owner plays a crucial role within the Product Management team, reporting directly to the Manager of Technical Product Management. This position is responsible for managing all phases of the product lifecycle, which includes defining the product vision, creating a roadmap, setting iteration goals, and managing the product backlog. The Product Owner will lead the planning, coordination, and implementation of systems, applications, and technologies for large and complex strategic products. This role may involve leading products and projects from their original concept through to final closeout, ensuring that all aspects of the product are aligned with the organization's goals and user needs. In this position, the Product Owner will communicate with agency executives and may also provide updates to the Board of Directors regarding the status of products or projects. A key responsibility will be to analyze and evaluate existing and proposed systems, perform business process reviews, and manage all functions related to the implementation of technology projects. The Product Owner will lead project teams composed of both internal and external technical and non-technical staff, guiding them to successful project completion. Additionally, this role emphasizes customer-focused service, requiring the Product Owner to build positive and constructive relationships with stakeholders and customers by understanding their needs and providing timely communication. The Product Owner will oversee advanced product management work in a technical, agile environment, ensuring that the product lifecycle is managed effectively from conception to completion. They will establish and communicate the product vision, ensuring alignment with end-user needs and organizational objectives. The role involves managing sprint planning and capacity planning activities, remaining engaged with the Product Team throughout iterations, and empowering team members to make quick decisions. The Product Owner will also provide insights into product development based on technology, consumer, and transportation trends, collaborating closely with various stakeholders to refine requirements for bug fixes, application enhancements, and IT projects. Furthermore, they will oversee system security efforts, ensuring compliance with security standards, conducting risk assessments, and leading disaster recovery planning and testing.

Responsibilities

• Oversee advanced product management work in a technical, agile environment for the product lifecycle from conception to completion.
• Establish and communicate the vision of the product aligned with the end users needs and organizational goals and objectives.
• Manage sprint planning and capacity planning activities to ensure successful sprint set-up and enablement.
• Remain engaged and responsive to the other members of the Product Team throughout iterations to clarify understanding of requirements.
• Empower Product Team to make quick decisions.
• Provide insights into product from technology, consumer, and transportation trends.
• Collaborate closely with technical and non-technical stakeholders including other IT teams, end users and executive teams to elicit, develop and refine requirements for bug fixes, application enhancements and IT projects.
• Act as the primary liaison between stakeholders, internal IT teams, and executive leadership, providing regular updates and fostering a collaborative environment.
• Develop feature backlog, user stories, and roadmaps according to business or IT value and cost of product development.
• Oversee efforts in system security by ensuring compliance to security standards and policies, monitoring access privileges, conducting risk assessments, investigations of suspicious activities, and remediation of identified security threats or risks.
• Document test cases and perform comprehensive testing during implementation and upgrades.
• Coordinate and conduct User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to ensure products, fixes and enhancements meet the required quality standards as well as end user expectations.
• Lead the planning and undertaking of periodic risk analysis of systems and mitigate risks wherever possible.
• Lead the planning and testing of disaster recovery.
• Lead implementing, monitoring and verifying backups.
• Perform other duties as required and/or assigned in support of Capital Metro Strategic Goals and the IT Vision, Mission, and Objectives aligned to these goals.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field.
• Five (5) years of experience in Information Technology or related field; including three (3) years managing technical and functional teams.
• Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) by the Project Management Institute or equivalent product owner certification is preferred.
• Experience with direct end user support in a customer service role.
• Demonstrated dedication to customer service.