Product Owner

Babel Street is currently seeking a Product Owner for our Product 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's vision and meet customer expectations. You will be the primary for prioritizing our product vision, roadmap, and growth opportunities- collaborating between Product and Engineering to meet our strategic goals.

What you will do:

Collaborate between Product Manager and Developers:

• Communicate clearly: The Product Owner must act as a bridge between the Product Manager and the Development team.
• Act as an Advocate for Development Team: The PO communicates effectively with senior managers, 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 will 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's needs.

Product Development and Feature Backlog:

• Communicate with Product Manager: Be the link between the 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 backlog so it remains relevant and focused in delivering the most valuable functionalities within a set timeframe.
• Review and Adjust: Regularly review and adjust the 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 prepares 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.

What you'll need to succeed:

• Experience in Product Development
• Strong communication skills to effectively communicate and manage conflicting needs between stakeholders and development
• Analytical and problem-solving skills for mitigating roadblocks to achieving sprint/release goals
• Ability to context switch effectively across multiple, potentially unrelated development teams and products within a diverse PM-managed portfolio

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 product management tools like Jira and Confluence
• Excellent listening and communication skills are required

Benefits at Babel Street (just to name a few...)

• Health Benefits: Babel Street covers 85-100% monthly premium costs for Medical, Dental, Vision, Life & Disability insurances - for you and your family!
• Retirement Plans:Babel Street offers both a Traditional and Roth 401(K) with a very competitive match.
• Unlimited Flexible Leave: We trust our employees to manage their own time and balance their personal and work lives.
• Holidays: Babel Street provides employees with 12 paid Federal Holidays
• Tuition Reimbursement: We are committed to investing in our employees. One way we do that is with our Tuition Reimbursement Program for continuing education.

Babel Street is anequalopportunity/affirmative actionemployer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration foremploymentwithout regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. Further,Babel Street will not discriminate against applicants for inquiring about, discussing or disclosing their pay or, in certain circumstances, the pay of their co-worker,Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination.In addition, Babel Street's policy is to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified employees who have protected disabilities to the extent required by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances where a particular employee works. Upon request, we will provide you with more information about such accommodations.