IT Product Owner

Job Description: IT Product Owner

Location: Hybrid Chicago IL
Duration: Through end of year (extensions possible)

Work Model / Location Notes

• Onsite Monday Thursday for the first few weeks
• After ramp up: Onsite Mondays & Wednesdays
• Strong preference for onsite interviews; remote candidates considered only if able to relocate and be onsite Day 1

Role Overview

Client is seeking an experienced Product Owner to join the TPM team and help address a growing backlog of enterprise platform and integration work. This role will focus on maximizing the value of platform products by owning and prioritizing the engineering backlog while partnering closely with digital product managers engineering teams and enterprise stakeholders.

The ideal candidate brings strong enterprise product ownership experience comfort working across multiple teams and a solid technical foundation across APIs cloud data integrations and identity/access platforms. Product Owners with banking or large enterprise experience tend to do well in this environment (industry experience is not required).

Key Responsibilities

• Act as Product Owner for large complex high value enterprise initiatives
• Own prioritize and continuously refine the engineering product backlog
• Maximize the value delivered by the engineering teams through clear prioritization and decision making
• Communicate backlog priorities and product vision to development teams and stakeholders
• Serve as the primary decision maker for technical product features and tradeoffs
• Translate complex business needs into epics features and sprint ready user stories
• Coordinate work across multiple engineering and platform teams
• Partner with stakeholders to align on release scope timelines and delivery
• Communicate product status dependencies risks and backlog priorities
• Support agile ceremonies and champion agile best practices within the organization

Technical & Domain Focus Areas

• API driven integrations data flows and shared data services
• Cloud environments with a strong preference for Azure
• DevOps tooling: Azure DevOps (ADO) preferred; strong Jira experience acceptable
• Snowflake and data platform integrations
• Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM)
• Directory services and shared enterprise data usage across applications
• Registration flows data collection and streamlining user onboarding processes

Required Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Information Systems Engineering or a related field (preferred)
• 5 years of experience as a Product Owner or software developer
• 5 years of experience leading technical teams while managing multiple initiatives
• 3 years working in Agile delivery environments
• Hands on experience with enterprise class platforms and integrations
• Strong ability to work across multiple teams and coordinate dependencies
• Excellent verbal written and stakeholder communication skills
• Strong planning organizational and accountability skills
• Ability to navigate complex enterprise scale technical environments

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Agile tools such as Azure DevOps Jira Rally or similar
• Experience working in onshore/offshore delivery models
• Strong understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• Background in banking or large enterprise platforms (industry experience not required)
• Ability to empower teams and drive outcomes with minimal escalation
• Masters degree or hands on technical development background a plus