Data Product Owner

Kestra Holdings•Austin, TX

16h

About The Position

Kestra is seeking a customer-focused, detail-oriented Data Product Owner to support the development and delivery of our enterprise data platform. Reporting to the Manager of Data Product Management, this role is focused on translating business needs for data into actionable work for our scrum teams and managing the backlog and implementation process. The Product Owner serves as a liaison between business stakeholders and the development team, ensuring technical solutions align with Kestra's business objectives. A successful Product Owner balances strategy, governance, and implementation and effectively facilitates productive conversations between all impacted stakeholders - executives, engineers, analysts, product teams, and external customers.

Requirements

Strong sense of ownership, accountability, and a proactive mindset focused on outcomes and continuous improvement.
Well-versed in agile practices such as Scrum and Kanban.
Strong analytical mindset with the ability to gather, document, and translate business and data requirements into Epics and User Stories with clear acceptance criteria.
Solid understanding of data management principles, including data ingestion, data warehousing, data modeling, data quality, and governance.
Ability to write SQL queries for data validation, analysis, and acceptance testing.
Strong collaboration skills with the ability to align business stakeholders and data engineers around a shared understanding of priorities and technical feasibility.
Adept at breaking down complex, ambiguous data problems into actionable components that align with enterprise objectives.
Skilled at facilitating technical and business discussions, driving alignment, and making informed decisions that consider multiple perspectives.
Effective communicator - both written and verbal - with the ability to explain data concepts and project impacts to non-technical stakeholders.
Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities, adjust plans in response to change, and maintain delivery focus in a dynamic environment.
Empathy and active listening skills to understand stakeholder needs and user pain points, driving the creation of valuable, user-centered data solutions.
Comfortable working across multiple teams and business units, coordinating dependencies, and ensuring consistent delivery within a broader data product portfolio.
Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, Data Analytics, or related field; equivalent work experience will be considered.
3+ years of experience as a Product Owner or Business Analyst supporting data platforms, enterprise reporting, or analytics solutions in an Agile environment.
Hands-on experience with cloud-based data platforms, ideally within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem (e.g., Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse, Data Lake) and Databricks.
Strong familiarity with data warehousing concepts, data ingestion processes, and data product lifecycle management.
Proficient in using product and collaboration tools such as JIRA and Confluence for backlog management and team communication.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with Engineering, Governance, Data, and Product leadership to execute the vision and roadmap for Kestra's enterprise data platform, including reporting, analytics, and data product capabilities.
Develop a deep understanding of Kestra's data strategy, source systems, and end-to-end data workflows to inform backlog prioritization and delivery.
Develop a deep understanding of Master Data Management as a technology discipline, and how it is being implemented at Kestra to drive the team’s execution.
Translate business and analytical needs into clear, actionable backlog items for scrum teams, focusing on data ingestion, data model enhancements, platform modernization, and data product development.
Break down large-scale data initiatives - such as adding new data sources or building shared data assets - into manageable user stories and work with technical leads to ensure readiness for implementation.
Prioritize features, enhancements, and enablers in the data product backlog based on business value, technical dependencies, and PI commitments.
Facilitate backlog refinement sessions and maintain a well-groomed, continuously evolving backlog that reflects current priorities and team capacity.
Participate in design and architecture discussions to ensure solutions meet analytical needs, support reusability, and align with data governance and quality standards.
Act as the primary liaison between business users, data analysts, data engineers, and developers to ensure consistent understanding and delivery of business needs.
Coordinate dependencies and share learnings across the Product Owners and teams to support enterprise alignment across the data ecosystem.
Collaborate with the release manager and QA to support production deployments and communicate release notes to business stakeholders.