Product Owner - Commercial (Finance)

Equifax is seeking a technical product owner who is a master at bridging the desires of the customer and the capabilities of the technology, removing barriers to software development.

You will be responsible for grooming the product backlog and have insight into technical requirements of individual stories thus creating a more efficient user experience.

This role requires being in our Alpharetta, Georgia office 3 days/week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

What you will do

• Connects with the Customer in partnership with Product Management - Know the customer & stakeholders: Understands the needs of customers and stakeholders in a broader context; Develops partnership relationships with key engineering and QA counterparts and engages with Architecture teams as needed; Understands the Problem(s) to be solved: Participates in interviews with users, customers and stakeholders to understand requirements; Can articulate and decompose the work into discrete increments that align to customer needs; Provides inputs in business/technical requirements definition; Develops whole product solutions: Understands the end product/functionality needed and can articulate a broader need to deliver a more holistic solution; Provides guidance to engineering and QA teams when clarity about business requirements is needed.
• Contributes to the Plan and Roadmap - Solutioning and Estimation: Active participant in solutioning and epic decomposition process to groom the backlog of stories, as well as initial t-shirt sizing sessions; Provides inputs to QE partners to ensure testing approach and high level use cases are considered in the solution and estimation; Helps drive MVP definition with stakeholders when applicable; Dependency management: Drives the process to identify, capture and document dependencies required to deliver the plan in partnership with engineering and architecture teams; Interacts with dependent teams to understand dependencies; Backlog Prioritization and planning: Active participant in the process of initial estimates and value/effort assessment to define scope of quarterly increments; Contributes to the analysis of how work should be sequenced and the implications to the critical path.
• Manages & Prioritizes Team Backlog(s) - User Story creation: Reviews initial drafts of stories developed and/or contributes to refinement for Product Management review; Prioritization and sprint planning: Aligns prioritization with Product Management and Product Owner best practices for defined backlog; Creates sprint, sprint goal, ensures sprint plans are in place for the current sprint and the subsequent two sprints; Drives alignment with upstream dependencies to deliver; Testing and Acceptance Criteria: Drives adherence to story acceptance criteria to ensure development team delivers according to desired outcome and readiness checklist; Partners with QE and Engineering lead to define testing approach, scope and planning; Provides final sign-off/acceptance of stories; Demos: Reviews initial drafts and partners with product managers to prepare sprint/quarterly demos. Is capable of presenting the demo itself.
• Getting and Applying Feedback & Lessons Learned - Captures feedback from Demos: Actively lead documentation and synthesize feedback from demos for tangible future work efforts to be considered in the backlog with Product Management; Delivery Retrospectives: Velocity, quality (incidents/bugs), reasons for delays: Understands drivers of team velocity; Understands testing gaps that drove incidents and bugs; Understands drivers for delays in committed deliverables; Synthetizes learnings and proposes a prioritized set of changes in partnership with technology partners; Monitors adoption KPIs: Understands metrics driving the adoption success of the released value and proposes changes to upcoming deliverables to drive improvements; Adopts feedback in future iterations: Drives the scope and/or changes to new release increments to feedback collected.

What experience you need

• Bachelor's degree in a related discipline strongly preferred; equivalent experience may be considered
• 5-7 years of product owner experience in a cloud-based and/or SaaS environment
• Working experience using Agile methodologies, facilitating Agile ceremonies and Lean product management required
• Working experience with data structures, data analytics and AI concepts preferred
• Experience working with cross functional teams preferred
• Exposure and experience understanding and tracking capacity against the budget of product initiatives
• Cloud certification strongly preferred

What could set you apart

• You have the ability build strong relationships with partners across the business; ensure that you understand their role, the needs of their area, and their requirements throughout the project
• You are a self-starter who is organized, detail oriented, takes initiative with minimal direction, and understands concepts quickly
• You understand the value of product ownership and can effectively communicate the value proposition
• You have experience working with multiple partners in a global setting with varying level of needs
• You bring a consultative, creative and process driven approach to your work
• You have an aptitude for handling multiple concurrent demands and prioritizing responsibilities in a dynamic, high energy environment
• Your problem-solving skills enable you to effectively and creatively find solutions for hard problems while maintaining a high level of professionalism and integrity
• Engage and collaborate with all stakeholders, make people feel heard and understood, are able to say no and stand up for tough calls needed to better serve the business and our clients