Technical Product Owner

Summary

Ascend Learning is a healthcare and learning technology company serving students, educators, and employers with data-driven learning and certification solutions. The Technical Product Owner translates business and customer needs into technical product requirements, manages and prioritizes backlogs, supports agile development teams, and drives alignment through product delivery, communication, documentation, and decision-making.

Responsibilities

• Understand market needs and transform business requirements into features and user stories with clear acceptance criteria to convey specific functionality from an end-user perspective
• Engage with Technical Product Managers and business product owner as needed to gather and understand customer needs and requirements, incorporating feedback into the backlog
• Prioritize and manage backlogs, maintaining a well-prioritized list of features and user stories; use feedback from user engagement to adapt/modify requirements, features, prioritization of features, and product performance
• Modify/change product features and requirements in response to new information on markets/customers from Product Managers
• Conduct work prioritization and work sequencing and manage sprints and development of new features / products. Continuously map back to integrated roadmap milestones to ensure alignment on delivery
• Track and manage product development to ensure alignment with established product requirements and market / user feedback
• Support development teams in grooming the backlog during sprint planning by clarifying user stories and setting priorities
• Oversee performance against success criteria, including customer perspective and UAT/OT
• Drive alignment through effective and consistent communication
• Deliver consistent and clear release notes
• Support and drive documentation that supports both the delivery of capabilities that meet customer needs and enable training and implementation of capabilities
• Articulate risk and mitigations early and often
• Drive decision making on tradeoffs through clear understanding of business need, technical options and viable options

Skills

• * Bachelor's degree in related fields, such as Business Administration, Information Technology, Computer Science or other areas combined with relevant work experience
• * Minimum of 3+ years of combined experience in a combination of project management, consulting, Agile development or information technology (project management alone is insufficient)
• * Experience working in a dynamic environment, with need to adapt to changing priorities, market dynamics, and evolving business needs and guide teams accordingly
• * An exceptional communicator and collaborator, adept at working across different functions and diverse cultures
• * Ability to successfully translate business requirements into features and user stories, and manage/ prioritize a feature backlog
• * Effective communicator and collaborator able to breakdown complex business problems into logical and deliverable work that can easily tie back to business themes and priorities
• * Ability to ensure that the vision for 'how a product needs to perform for a customer' is embodied in the design of the product, including for technical specifications
• * In-depth understanding of Agile methodology (tools, processes, roles)
• * Ability to understand minimum viable product requirements and prioritize
• * Experience working in an agile environment is strongly preferred

Qualifications

Must Haves

• * Bachelor's degree in related fields, such as Business Administration, Information Technology, Computer Science or other areas combined with relevant work experience
• * Minimum of 3+ years of combined experience in a combination of project management, consulting, Agile development or information technology (project management alone is insufficient)
• * Experience working in a dynamic environment, with need to adapt to changing priorities, market dynamics, and evolving business needs and guide teams accordingly
• * An exceptional communicator and collaborator, adept at working across different functions and diverse cultures
• * Ability to successfully translate business requirements into features and user stories, and manage/ prioritize a feature backlog
• * Effective communicator and collaborator able to breakdown complex business problems into logical and deliverable work that can easily tie back to business themes and priorities
• * Ability to ensure that the vision for 'how a product needs to perform for a customer' is embodied in the design of the product, including for technical specifications
• * In-depth understanding of Agile methodology (tools, processes, roles)
• * Ability to understand minimum viable product requirements and prioritize

Nice to Haves

• * Experience working in an agile environment is strongly preferred

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Company paid life Insurance
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid time off and parental leave
• Employee assistance program
• Other wellness programs such as Headspace and Airvet
• Charitable matching program
• Most regular, full-time employees are eligible to participate in an Ascend incentive bonus or sales plan.