Product Owner

At Upstate Interactive the Product Owner has a role that is external and internal. The role involves the day-to-day balancing of the needs of Upstate Interactive on the one hand with the needs of the client on the other hand.

For the client, the Product Owner is the development team's primary point of contact. There is the possibility of either focusing on a single client at a time or working on multiple clients simultaneously. The role works with the client and their stakeholders to define the product and deliver excellent software. At Sprint Planning the Product Owner is communicating with the client to understand priorities, reveal details that are valuable for the development team to hear, setting a Sprint Goal, and facilitating story point tracking. At Sprint Review the Product Owner is convening discussion and may be demonstrating the Increment developed during the Sprint. The Sprint Review aligns with reporting and the Product Owner delivers a Sprint Report that serves as the written documentation of the activity of the Sprint.

For the development team, the Product Owner is the direct supervisor, setting goals and measuring progress. The role involves creating the initial product board and implementing improvements that allow for increasingly accurate forecasts. During development the Product Owner is inspecting the backlog and adapting it.

For Upstate Interactive, the Product Owner works in the operations team. The role collaborates with the sales team, the HR team, and the business owners, to manage approval of contracts and statements of work, staffing of projects, and handling the sales handoff. This means preparing drafts of User Stories that fit into new Statements of Work. This means identifying upcoming needs for staffing. This means communicating areas for growth and new business.

The Product Owner role is an essential team member at Upstate Interactive. This is a role with responsibility and creativity. Success in this role is measured qualitatively by client satisfaction and quantitatively by Sprint metrics. Beyond running a Sprint, this is a role that finds success by recognizing the interests of all parties, managing the competing interests, and delivering excellent software.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR:

• 3-5 years of experience managing agile software development teams
• An excellent communicator who can balance technical knowledge with business acumen
• A software professional who is capable of overseeing the end-to-end launch of software products
• Experience running a Product Board in any of: ZenHub, GitLab, and JIRA
• Technical experience in any of: web, mobile, and blockchain engineering
• An individual who enjoys interfacing with all of the product stakeholders and can inspire collaboration and alignment

NICE TO HAVE:

• Experience in an agency environment
• Scrum.org Product Owner Certification
• Experience working in Agile Scrum environments