Product Owner

A client of Sharp Decisions Inc. is looking to bring on a Product Owner to be based in Torrance, CA. The position is HYBRID (4 days a week onsite). The contract duration is 17 months with possible extension. *W2 and local only.

• This role will involve a high percent of testing; we are looking for candidates with experience in writing their own UAT scripts and executing those scripts.
• We are looking for candidates who have strong communication skills and be able to clearly articulate their thoughts.
• Salesforce experience is required.
• Experienced with Agile methodology, backlog planning, and product management process.
• Experienced with writing user stories, acceptance criteria, writing UAT test scripts, and executing UAT scripts all with quality.

JOB DESCRIPTION:.
We are looking for an entrepreneurial Product Owner to join as a key member of our digital team. You will own responsibilities across the entire software development life cycle for projects and production support. For example, you will drive grooming sessions, capture requirements and acceptance criteria, aid the prioritization and sizing of work, prepare and perform user acceptance testing, assist field training, craft customer / field / stakeholder communications, perform demos, support launch and triage during warranty.
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You are as comfortable leading and collaborating with UX, marketing and training as you are working with engineering, testing, SOX, compliance and legal. You are open to ambiguity and quickly flex for changing conditions. You use outstanding written and verbal multidisciplinary communication skills and have an eagerness to make steady progress to successfully engage business and IT partners from AHFC, enterprise or external vendors.
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As a Product Owner for a financial services provider, you are detail oriented and own a high level of accountability. You maintain high standards for both project launches and operational excellence through quality, cost and delivery. You are a fast learner who will become a subject matter expert on customer personas, the platform, payment flows, business rules, account conditions, etc. You will measure and analyze metrics for business cases and platform reporting.
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As such, daily tasks include:
• leading the Product team and be a subject matter expert for the Salesforce and mobile app environments
• write clear user stories and acceptance criteria
• work with Business and IT teams to document process flows, status reports
• write and execute well planned test scripts for UAT and provide support of other testing workstreams. Triage. Report on testing results
• support nationwide customer, dealer and field for operations (including the chat line and inbox), training and organizational change management
• working with CX, business, development and testing resources to imagine, write, deliver and test user stories
• leading initiatives. Meeting with leadership to articulate art of the possible, proposal plans and budgets to gain approvals
• maintaining operations to meet SLAs through payments batch, deployments, maintenance and vendor releases, platform releases, incident management and troubleshooting, license management, cost management, vendor management, etc.
• lead agile spring planning, demo, retrospective and backlog management

Position Success Criteria (Desired) - 'WANTS'
• CUSTOMER FACING PRODUCT EXPERIENCE.
• PAYMENTS EXCELLENCE.
• ROADMAP + DECISION MAKING.
• PEOPLE SKILLS PLATFORM STRATEGY.
• BA/BS degree
• 3-5 years of product management, product development or product operations experience with customer facing top brand (Fortune 500) digital product
• 3-5 years of leadership experience, managing mixed teams: business / IT, internal / external, onshore / nearshore / offshore
• 1-2 years of roadmap and business planning experience. Experience driving procurement process from identification of options, evaluations and RFI/RFP selection of tools and vendors
• 1-2 years of direct leadership experience, managing associates (PREFERRED)
• 2 years of payments, financial services or captive finance industry experience
• Agile certification for Product Owner or Scrum Master (PREFER SAFe Agile)
• Salesforce certifications (PREFERRED). Else ability to gain Salesforce admin certification by year 1
• Mobile app experience (PREFERRED)

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