Senior Product Owner I

Summary

Sage is an education-focused organization with a Technology department responsible for building and maintaining the systems that run its business. The Senior Product Owner I will own and improve the Microsoft Dynamics CRM product for sales divisions, managing the backlog, validating user needs, coordinating delivery and dependencies, and measuring outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Own and prioritize the product backlog, making clear decisions about sequencing and trade-offs, and keeping the roadmap connected to both business objectives and the wider technology strategy
• Build strong relationships with your internal customers in textbook sales and journal advertising sales, translating their needs into well-defined, valuable work for the delivery team
• Lead discovery and validation. Talk to users, interrogate the data, and test assumptions before committing engineering effort
• Partner closely with engineers and architects in Sage Technology, developing enough technical understanding of the platform to anticipate delivery risks and shape feasible solutions
• Manage competing priorities and cross-team dependencies within the technology estate, negotiating openly when demands conflict and keeping stakeholders aligned on what is happening and why
• Define what success looks like, then measure it. Use adoption data, performance metrics, and user feedback to judge whether changes actually worked
• Contribute to the Product Management team's own practice, supporting your delivery team's agile ways of working and mentoring colleagues in good product habits

Skills

• 3-5 years of experience as a product owner, product manager, or in a comparable role, with hands-on responsibility for a backlog. If your experience sits slightly outside that range but you can show the capability, we would still like to hear from you
• A track record of writing clear user stories and acceptance criteria, and running effective refinement with a delivery team
• Strong stakeholder management. You can hold your ground with senior people, say no with a reason, and keep relationships intact
• Confidence working with data to inform prioritization, and the critical thinking to question what the numbers are actually telling you
• Experience working in agile delivery teams, ideally with colleagues in multiple locations and time zones
• Genuine curiosity about the business you support and the users you serve
• Experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365, or with another CRM platform such as Salesforce or HubSpot
• Background in publishing, higher education, media, or advertising sales
• Experience with system integrations, data migration, or the wider Microsoft Power Platform
• Experience supporting teams through changes in process or tooling
• A product owner or agile certification such as CSPO. Helpful context, not a requirement

Qualifications

Must Haves

• 3-5 years of experience as a product owner, product manager, or in a comparable role, with hands-on responsibility for a backlog. If your experience sits slightly outside that range but you can show the capability, we would still like to hear from you
• A track record of writing clear user stories and acceptance criteria, and running effective refinement with a delivery team
• Strong stakeholder management. You can hold your ground with senior people, say no with a reason, and keep relationships intact
• Confidence working with data to inform prioritization, and the critical thinking to question what the numbers are actually telling you
• Experience working in agile delivery teams, ideally with colleagues in multiple locations and time zones
• Genuine curiosity about the business you support and the users you serve

Nice to Haves

• Experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365, or with another CRM platform such as Salesforce or HubSpot
• Background in publishing, higher education, media, or advertising sales
• Experience with system integrations, data migration, or the wider Microsoft Power Platform
• Experience supporting teams through changes in process or tooling
• A product owner or agile certification such as CSPO. Helpful context, not a requirement

Benefits

• Highly competitive and comprehensive PPO medical, dental, and vision care benefits package with Sage covering most of the premium costs
• A company-sponsored anniversary trip every 5 years
• A 401(k)-matching program of 100% up to 5% of pay
• Financial support for bachelor's and graduate-level degree programs
• Learning for personal interest
• Freedom and autonomy in your day-to-day with hybrid or remote work, depending on the role