Product Owner
Chicago, IL

Job Description

Application Instructions

Please list all professional experience and explain any gaps in employment history.

Job Description

As an increasing number of large publishers move their critical business processes to Arc Publishing, we are in need of high-powered product talent to aid our clients in onboarding onto the platform. You are central to transforming customer requirements into functional software integrated with Arc Publishing, and to ultimately helping our clients achieve their business goals on Arc.

The Product Owner, Professional Services (PO) role functions as part of the Arc Professional Services team to ensure key enterprise customer success in onboarding onto the Arc platform. POs understand the business goals of the customer, and keep those in mind as they help drive customer engagements forward. The PO works with the Technical Delivery Manager to understand overall pacing of the project, project milestones and project scope, and develops a product roadmap for delivery of custom websites, native iOS and Android mobile apps, and CMS system integrations under Statements of Work that we sign with our clients. The PO works as part of a scrum team with engineers, designers, and a scrum master.

In order to be successful in this role, you must possess customer facing skills that allow you to represent Arc well and interact with client engineering, business and design staff under time and delivery pressures. You should be an Agile expert who understands how to decompose and prioritize business and design requirements into something accomplish-able by a team of engineers. You should also have a demonstrated ability to think strategically about business, product, and technical challenges as you help our customers take advantage of the efficiencies, cost savings and quick innovation available only in a cloud-hosted CMS such as Arc.

Responsibilities:

* Drive forward development of Arc customer onboarding projects, multi-workstream programs involving extensive front-end development and back-end integrations, by managing the product backlog for custom-developed websites and complex system integrations.
* Lead multiple Arc onboarding scrum teams as the Product Owner, providing vision and direction to the Agile development team and stakeholders throughout the project.
* Plan and prioritize stories for the implementation backlog, particularly development of enterprise-scale websites for large news & information websites.
* Ensure that the several scrum teams always have an adequate groomed backlog of development tasks.
* Assess value, develop cases, and prioritize stories, epics and themes to ensure work focuses on those that are aligned with program delivery timeline and maximum value for the client.
* Work closely with client stakeholders, developers and designers to gather requirements to write stories. Engage with clients in grooming and UAT sessions to ensure the work performed by our team meets their expectations.
* Work with the development teams to clarify stories and provide detail needed to estimate and execute on planned work.
* Work closely with the Technical Delivery Manager to create and maintain a product backlog according to the overall implementation program roadmap.
* Create release plans and set expectation for UAT and delivery of features to Arc clients.
* Provide an active role in mitigating impediments impacting successful team completion of release/sprint goals.
* Aid development team and Newsroom Integration Consultant in managing configuration of the Arc products being delivered to the client and testing the installation.
* Keep abreast with Agile/Scrum best practices and new trends.
* Collaborate with the appropriate business functions and teams to assess and recommend technologies that support customer needs.
* Gather business needs, traffic analytics, and feedback from client and client implementation to identify new opportunities and areas for enhancements.
* Establish self as subject-matter expert on Arc products and Arc Professional Services best practices.
* Monitor and analyze key performance metrics as well as identify and measure the impact of new features.
* Regularly track product performance and success metrics, and report them to stakeholders

Qualifications:

* Bachelor's Degree or equivalent work experience.
* 3 - 5 years of experience as a Product Owner or Product Manager, preferably in a B2B or client services environment.
* Experience analyzing customer feedback, user research, and performance data to guide product feature development.
* Experience monitoring product performance and managing troubleshooting efforts in real time.
* In-depth, working knowledge of Agile methodologies, process and principles.
* Strong customer focus and bias for action. Previous customer-facing experience a plus.
* Experience with Jira and Confluence required. Experience with Aha product planning software a plus.
* Experience with web development, distributed systems, APIs, systems architecture.
* Be able to understand and interact with APIs and other technical/developer systems and tools.
* This position may require up to 25% travel to client work locations, including internationally.
* Strong organizational, creative problem-solving, and collaborative skills.
* Proven ability to interact effectively at all levels within an organization, including executive and C-level.Ability to work well in a dynamic group environment and under deadline pressures.