Product Owner

Description

Summary:

Reporting to the VP of Product, the Product Owner (PO) is responsible for leading multiple Agile SCRUM sprint team(s) delivering leading edge software solutions that drive best in class solutions in the mobile and web app economy. We are looking for a smart, ambitious, analytical and passionate individual who live and breathe 'product' with an unquenchable drive to innovate, create and bring to market world-class software solutions with a beautiful user experience!

About Us:

Our product and engineering group is the heart and soul of a platform that provides the insight, analytics, and tools to make good apps great, and great apps exemplary. Our SaaS tools connect developers with in-the-wild resources and advanced data analytics to improve the quality of apps that delight and engage billions of users worldwide for companies like Google, Netflix, MLB and HBO.

We need to add a team player to our team that will help drive solutions across multiple development teams on two continents. We work hard together, support each other, and collaborate with a team-focused approach where everyone has the potential to have a positive impact every day. We fail fast, iterate, and prioritize while keeping an eye on what’s most important.

Responsibilities:

• Be the "CEO" of your product with responsibility for ensuring the product delights customers and meets internal goals and financial targets.
• Responsible for creating and prioritizing the team backlog. This includes authoring epics (big ideas), creating user stories and working with your sprint teams to decompose those user stories into development tasks. 

• Obtain voice of the customer and other key stakeholders to ensure awareness of market challenges and problems that our product and services solve. Elicit business requirements, develop use cases, create conceptual prototypes, and evaluate ROI of potential product offerings

• Lead backlog grooming sessions, sprint planning, daily stand-ups and sprint demonstrations

• Ensure that Sales, Delivery, Community Management, Customer Support and other employees are fully informed about product capabilities. Help develop messaging and positioning for our products.

• Measure results, gather feedback and manage the product post release - continuous analysis, revising forecasts and closing the loop to future roadmap deliverables.
• Own a product vision and clearly communicate its technical requirements with the engineering team while communicating the status, impediments and risks to the business team

• Coordinate releases, ensure dependencies and interfaces are understood and tested and be the accountable leader for team deliverables and dates.

Required skills, experience and education

• 5+ years of experience leading efforts to capture opinions, thoughts, feedback, suggestions from internal and external stakeholders, advisors, industry experts, market trends, emerging technology, press and customers

• 3+ years experience in Agile Scrum development methodologies, specifically in the creation of user stories based market needs, voice of the customers and other key stakeholders to guide the efforts of the development team

• Hands-on experience and interest in documenting features and product API, creating product position, researching functional details, sizing level of effort, ranking importance and opportunity and prioritization.

• A proven self-starter with excellent organizational skills, who thrives in a fast-paced work environment and is capable of delivering exceptional work product under time constraints
• Superb negotiation skills, knowing when to hold firm and when to compromise based on business value and impact to the Scrum Team.
• Proven ability to simplify the inherently complex and organize and plan solutions necessary to iteratively address market needs
• Exceptionally strong written and verbal communications with a strong aptitude for succinctly presenting thoughts and ideas to varied audience types

 Company Description

Applause empowers leading brands to deliver flawless digital experiences for their customers on any device, in every location. The company’s testing, feedback and research solutions enable businesses to delight customers, drive topline revenue and innovate faster.

Applause ensures digital quality for websites, mobile apps, IoT products and in-store interactions in a way no other approach can – via its technology platform and managed global community of over 300,000 on-demand digital experience experts. Only real people on real devices in real locations can provide the real issues and feedback that brands need to deliver great digital customer experiences. Thousands of companies of every size – including Google, FOX, Nike, BMW, PayPal and Slack – rely on Applause to dramatically decrease the time and cost of delivering great digital experiences for their customers. Learn more at www.applause.com.