Technical Product Owner

Overview

Please note this position is based in our Phoenix, AZ Support Office. The Product Owner will play an important part of managing Sprouts’ product domains focusing on the end-to-end software lifecycle. This role serves as the bridge between stakeholders and development teams, ensuring the product vision aligns with the business objectives.

This role may be part of software selection, is responsible for defining and prioritizing the product backlog, working closely with cross functional teams to define requirements, design solutions, build configurations, implement, and ongoing support processes utilizing deep expertise of products.

The candidate for this position will have prior experience interacting with multiple levels of stakeholders, vendors, and developers to ensure the complete collection, documentation, and implementation of requirements.

This role will also require analytical mindset to solve challenges, interpersonal communication, and collaboration skills across cross-functional teams in addition to the ability to lead and guide teams through the project lifecycle with minimal supervisory direction to deliver high quality, valuable product solutions.

Overview of Responsibilities

• Craft & lead team through Product and process improvement opportunities
• Manage (as necessary) efforts that require traditional waterfall/SDLC project delivery/ status (i.e. vendor delivery of an upgrade, enhancements; OCM/communications/training) in adherence with SDLC and PMO standards.
• Manage run-the-business/continuous delivery via a Scrum methodology
• Identify ways to optimize technology including processes, adoption of tooling, and opportunities to automate for efficiency gains through owning and providing deep expertise of products
• Craft & own 1-2 Quarters of Roadmap view/ ownership w/ business partners and vendors
• Ownership of removing issues and mitigating risks across teams
• Responsible for partnering with business, vendors, and team members to gather all types of requirements for product enhancements
• Creates technical and non-functional requirements documentation to include visual representations of business processes and systems (i.e. current state, desired end state and performance of any gap analysis)
• Utilizes a variety of analytics, critical thinking, and problem-solving methods to find solutions to complex problems
• Ability to plan, write, and execute testing to support defined requirements and Test Plan; act as a Test Lead when needed
• Manages release/upgrade schedules while ensuring release notes are received, impacts are well understood, and pre/post deployment testing is completed
• Monitor Product Production Queue for new issues, triage, poor system performance; conducts regular audits, assign and/or address according to SLA
• Monitors and maintains system performance; conducts regular audits and provides recommendations for optimization and improvement
• Support solving escalated calls when On Call team members are unable to resolve themselves
• Auditing of roles and permissions, as required
• Act as a POC for business partners, IT, and vendors when product experiences a critical outage or issue
• Plan for and support execution of deployments and warranty periods across multiple teams
• Work with vendors to prioritize current sprint and future backlogs
• Provide feedback to vendors on participation, issue response, etc.
• Research and assess emergent technology in the industry for future strategic growth, bringing forth recommendations to keep Sprouts relevant
• Coach more junior team members as they grow into product ownership

Qualifications

Knowledge Skills & Abilities

• Bachelor’s degree in business, computer science, or equivalent work experience
• 3-5 years of experience as a Product Owner or Technical Business Analyst
• Preference given to candidates with experience in Retail Merchandising Systems with an emphasis in Assortment and Space Planning, Shelf Tags and Sign Management, Price Optimization, Promotion Planning, Sales Planning, Master Data Management/Product Information Management (MDM/PIM), and Inventory Management.
• Strong understanding of software development and technical concepts, with experience working in Agile environments
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to bridge the gap between business and technical teams
• Analytical and problem-solving skills, with a customer-focused approach to product development

Core Competencies

Communication: Convey information, ideas, and feedback clearly and concisely in an engaging manner that helps others understand and retain the message; listening actively to others.

Customer Focus: Place a high priority on the customer’s perspective when making decisions and taking action; implementing service practices that meet the customers’ and own organization’s needs.

Driving for Results: Set SMART goals and measure progress; tenaciously working to meet or exceed goals and making continuous improvement. Seeking innovative ways to solve problems that result in unique and differentiated solutions.

Positive Approach: Demonstrate a positive attitude in the face of difficult or challenging situations; provide an uplifting (yet realistic) outlook on what the future holds and the opportunities it might present.