E T Consultant (Product Owner)

World Bank Group • Washington, DC

9d • Onsite

About The Position

The Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) Vice Presidential Unit (VPU) enables the World Bank Group to achieve its mission of ending extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet by delivering transformative information and technologies to its staff working in over 150+ locations. ITS Finance accelerates information and technology as a force multiplier supporting WBG core finance and risk while enabling increased financial operations agility through a range of robust, flexible financing instruments and facilities for WBG private and public sector clients. We collaborate closely with our business partners to be a leading developmental financial institution that continues to deepen and sustain developmental impact. ITSFI’s portfolio is comprised of Treasury, Risk, Accounting and Financial Operations, and Developmental Finance. Under the ITSFI Director, the portfolio is operationalizing SAFe Lean Portfolio Management.

Requirements

• A Master's degree with at least 5 years of relevant experience, or a Bachelor's degree with at least 7 years of relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 5–10 years of direct SAFe experience at scale; financial institution experience strongly preferred.
• Required: SAFe Practice Consultant (SPC); Advanced SPC (ASPC); or SPC Trainer (SPCT) preferred.
• Working knowledge of Azure DevOps at Team and ART levels.
• Strong facilitation, coaching, and executive communication skills; SAFe Kanban Systems and flow metrics fluency.
• The candidate must be proficient in data analysis tools including SQL and Python, and familiar with financial reporting platforms such as SAP, Oracle, Azure Data Lakehouse, or equivalent systems. Strong working knowledge of Power BI, Tableau, or Microsoft Excel for reporting and visualization is required.
• A solid understanding of financial accounting principles, financial reporting standards, and financial statement analysis is essential, along with high attention to detail and strong analytical problem-solving skills.
• The PO must possess effective written and verbal communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to translate complex data into clear narratives for diverse audiences. Strong interpersonal skills are critical for engaging business stakeholders, end users, the Product Manager, System Architect, and Agile team members to gather requirements, validate priorities, and communicate progress. The ability to manage competing interests and negotiate trade-offs diplomatically is a key competency.
• The candidate must be skilled in creating, refining, and prioritizing the team backlog to ensure work is well-defined and ready for execution. This includes writing actionable user stories with clear acceptance criteria, decomposing features and epics, and applying prioritization techniques such as WSJF.
• The PO must also understand and communicate the product vision, strategy, and roadmap, ensuring that iteration-level work is consistently aligned with program-level objectives and business priorities.
• The PO must demonstrate a strong commitment to understanding customer needs and user experience, including participating in user research, gathering feedback, defining personas, and ensuring acceptance criteria reflect real user expectations.
• The candidate must be able to analyze business requirements, evaluate solution options, and make informed decisions under uncertainty. This includes interpreting data and metrics to assess feature performance, identifying dependencies and risks early, and resolving blockers with the team. Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to make pragmatic trade-off decisions are essential.
• While deep development expertise is not required, the PO must have a working understanding of the technical environment, system architecture, and technical constraints. Familiarity with data platforms, data integrations, data models, APIs, and non-functional requirements such as performance, security, and scalability at a conceptual level is expected.
• The PO is responsible for accepting or rejecting completed work based on defined acceptance criteria and the team's Definition of Done (DoD), ensuring only high-quality, tested, and deployable increments are accepted.
• The candidate should track and interpret Agile metrics — including velocity, flow efficiency, lead time, and feature adoption — and actively participate in Inspect & Adapt sessions to champion a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

Nice To Haves

• Preferred additional certifications: SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE), SAFe Agile Product Manager (APM), SAFe Product Owner (PO/PM), Scrum, Kanban.

Responsibilities

• Agile Product Ownership and Backlog Management: The Product Owner is responsible for owning and maintaining the team's product backlog, ensuring that user stories are well-defined, estimated, prioritized, and sprint-ready at all times. This includes translating business requirements into clear, actionable user stories with precise acceptance criteria, and decomposing features and epics into executable team-level work. The PO leads sprint planning, backlog refinement, and sprint review ceremonies in close collaboration with the Scrum Master and development team.
• Product Vision and Roadmap: The PO defines and communicates the product vision and multi-year roadmap, ensuring alignment with the World Bank Group's institutional corporate strategy and reporting priorities. The PO ensures that iteration-level delivery is consistently oriented toward program-level objectives, translating high-level strategic goals into actionable team work.
• Stakeholder Engagement and Representation: The PO serves as the primary liaison between the Corporate Reporting Agile Team and its stakeholder community across the World Bank Group, including Finance, Accounting, the Controller's office, and IT teams. This includes participating in relevant institutional meetings, representing the team's product portfolio to senior stakeholders, managing competing priorities diplomatically, and ensuring that business needs are accurately captured and reflected in the backlog.
• User Acceptance and Quality Assurance: The PO coordinates user acceptance testing and validates that delivered features meet stakeholder expectations prior to release. The PO is accountable for accepting or rejecting completed work based on defined acceptance criteria and the team's Definition of Done, ensuring that only high-quality, tested, and deployable increments are released to end users.
• Financial Data Analysis and Reporting: The PO collects, processes, analyzes, and presents financial data to support accurate and timely corporate reporting. This includes responding to ad hoc data and analytical requests from leadership and business units in a timely and accurate manner, and aligning with Finance, Accounting, and IT teams on data definitions, reporting requirements, and system changes.
• Reporting Automation and Process Improvement: The PO identifies opportunities to streamline and automate financial reporting processes, reducing manual effort and improving data accuracy. The PO develops and maintains standardized templates, data dictionaries, and documentation for reporting workflows, and supports the adoption of scalable and repeatable reporting practices across the team.
• Data Visualization and Communication: The PO develops interactive dashboards and visual reports using tools such as Power BI and Tableau to communicate financial insights effectively. Findings are presented in a clear, non-technical manner tailored to diverse audiences, including finance teams, senior management, and non-financial stakeholders across the institution.
• Performance Monitoring and Continuous Improvement: The PO monitors product performance and adoption metrics, using data to drive continuous improvement in prioritization, delivery, and reporting quality. The PO actively participates in Inspect & Adapt sessions and champions a culture of learning, experimentation, and iterative refinement within the team.
• Change Management and Communications: The PO supports organizational change management and communication activities related to new reporting capabilities, helping stakeholders understand, adopt, and benefit from enhancements to the corporate reporting platform.

Benefits

• Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
• Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
• Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior