Federal Reserve Financial Services Sr. Product Owner

CompanyFederal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) delivers a suite of payments services to financial institutions via FedLine® Solutions, Fedwire® Funds and Securities, the National Settlement Service (NSS), FedCash®1, FedACH®, Check Services, and the FedNow® Service. FRFS operates as a fully integrated organization with groups dedicated to customer experience, operations, technology, product and customer/industry management, enterprise services, payments system improvement, and one focused on the ongoing growth and development of the FedNow instant payment service. Our strategy defines our future direction, seeking to offer a fully integrated product suite that provides speed, resilience, and choice in meeting the payments needs of FRFS customers across the United States. Through our Enterprise structure, we strive to meet the needs of the marketplace for new products and services with speed and agility, seek to provide a robust and unified customer experience, and work to create career growth opportunities for FRFS staff.
The FRFS Enterprise operates with a customer-first mindset, comprised of team members seeking to do the best work of their careers in pursuit of our important central bank mission.
The selected candidate will reside within a reasonable commuting distance defined by the employing Reserve Bank and will work full-time onsite.

The Product Owner is aligned with the Lead Product Owner & Business Product Management and understands the product vision, goals, and roadmap.  They translate business wants and needs into a prioritized set of requirements by conducting business process analysis, needs assessments, and preliminary cost/benefits analyses to align with a robust information technology roadmap.

They manage and prioritize the team’s backlog accordingly and lead their respective Agile team in delivering most important customer/stakeholder outcomes.  Product Owners may also prepare functional, system and program specifications and assist in implementation of systems, as well as participate in System initiatives and/or workgroups.

Your role as Product Owner:

A successful candidate will be a leader with experience operating in complex organizations and delivering well supported solutions.  The Product Owner must:

• Continuously learn about the customer, their business needs, and contribution of the product to their desired outcomes
• Work with the Lead Product Owner and Product Management to communicate, re-enforce the vision, goals, and product roadmap, in the form of features/stories with the Agile team.
• Possess enough business and technical knowledge about the product to engage in team discussions.
• Work closely with architecture, engineering, and quality assurance to ensure the right customer problem is solved.
• Communicate with both technical and business stakeholders to understand and gather requirements and translate into technical specification when necessary.
• Decompose and prioritize epics/features into user stories and define detailed test acceptance criteria.
• Ensure technology-driven and risk-remediation requirements are prioritized to prevent the accumulation of technical debt and other vulnerabilities.
• Support the team as a subject matter expert representing the business and clarify any arising questions from the agile team.
• Support application development with enabler stories.
• Determine if the work done to complete a story met success criteria and accepts when satisfied.
• Assist in the analysis of defects and enhancements to determine severity and priority as well as overall validity.
• Contribute to discussions on risks, dependencies, issues, and schedule updates as needed.
• Ensures agreement on actions to address dependencies between broader FRFS teams
• Present working software to stakeholders at team and system demos.
• Prepare innovative product proposals and messaging for product forums; present to Group-level governance forums
• Utilize data and feedback to make informed decisions and continuously improve the product.
• Actively monitor product-specific OKRs and manage to targets with stakeholders.
• Contribute to the elaboration and advancement of the roles and responsibilities for this position, identifying process improvements and sharing with peers.
• Actively promote Agile behaviors within business, technology and across FRFS.

What we are looking for:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology or any technical related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Typically requires a minimum of 7-10 years of related experience.
• Ability to bridge the business/IT divide in a way that establishes rapport and gains understanding.
• Possess a strong understanding of business requirement development and analysis including use cases, functional specifications, user interface specifications, etc.
• Effective problem solver with ability to identify challenges, brainstorm ideas and collaborate with cross functional teams to implement effective solutions.
• Ability to work independently with minimal oversight and manage multiple deliverables simultaneously; take ownership of issue resolution and completion of high-quality deliverables.
• Strong teamwork, leadership, critical thinking, multitasking, and time management skills in a highly matrixed organization.
• Ability to develop deep subject matter expertise for specific products and its broader ecosystem to effectively drive enhancements, support internal stakeholders and influence broader decision making.
• Ability to understand and resolve blockers and delivery risk quickly and without the need for escalation outside their product scope.
• Ability to understand competing priorities across technology and business areas, clearly articulate options, and use personal influence to define the resolution across their product set and areas with payment interdependencies.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, ability to articulate ideas clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Certified Product Owner in Scrum or SAFe, preferably Advanced level, and recent JIRA experience are highly desirable
• Background in financial services industry with web applications in a cloud environment. 

Full Time / Part TimeFull time

Regular / TemporaryRegular

Job Exempt (Yes / No)Yes

Job CategoryProject/Product Management Family Group

Work ShiftFirst (United States of America)

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