FLEX Manager, Product Owner

Marriott•Bethesda, MD

5h•$48 - $82•Hybrid

About The Position

The FLEX Manager, Product Owner, Unified Experience Layer (UXL), is responsible for managing a defined UXL product area or squad-aligned capability that supports customer, product, and developer experiences across Digital and Enterprise products and channels. This role translates product strategy, stakeholder priorities, and business requirements into a clear, prioritized team backlog with delivery-ready epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and dependencies. The FLEX Manager, Product Owner partners closely with Product Management, Engineering, Architecture, QA, Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, RTEs, and business stakeholders to support end-to-end product delivery from discovery and refinement through sprint execution, validation, release readiness, and operational support. This role makes team-level product decisions, manages scope and sequencing trade-offs, and ensures the team is focused on delivering the highest-value work while escalating cross-product or portfolio-level decisions as appropriate. The FLEX Manager, Product Owner, should bring strong product ownership, stakeholder influence, Agile delivery discipline, and working knowledge of API-driven product delivery. Familiarity with GraphQL, developer-facing capabilities, and shared enterprise product capabilities is preferred. The role requires comfort operating in a highly matrixed environment with competing priorities, technical dependencies, and multiple stakeholder groups.

Requirements

5 years’ experience in product ownership, product management, business analysis, technology delivery, information technology application design/development, or a related technology discipline; undergraduate degree or equivalent experience/certification.
Experience with API-driven product delivery, Agile/Scrum/SAFe methodologies, product development planning and execution, and tools including Jira, Confluence, and Postman.
Demonstrated ability to manage and refine product backlogs, epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and Definition of Ready artifacts while partnering with Product Management, Engineering, Architecture, QA, Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, RTEs, and stakeholders in a matrixed environment.

Nice To Haves

Working knowledge of GraphQL, developer-facing API capabilities, shared enterprise product capabilities, and consumer onboarding/adoption practices.
Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams, communicate priorities, dependencies, risks, and trade-offs, and deliver results under complexity, ambiguity, and aggressive timelines.
Experience participating in PI Planning, backlog refinement, dependency management, release readiness, outcome/KPI reporting, and continuous improvement of product ownership practices.

Responsibilities

Owns and prioritizes the team backlog for a defined UXL product area or squad-aligned capability, ensuring work aligns to product vision, stakeholder priorities, and measurable outcomes.
Partners with Product Management to translate product strategy into actionable team-level backlog priorities, epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and delivery sequencing.
Makes team-level product decisions related to backlog priority, scope trade-offs, sequencing, Definition of Ready readiness, and acceptance criteria alignment, escalating cross-product or portfolio decisions as appropriate.
Maintains a well-refined, delivery-ready backlog with clear epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, dependencies, risks, assumptions, and environmental prerequisites.
Leads or actively participates in backlog refinement, sprint planning, PI Planning, demos, retrospectives, release readiness, and related Agile ceremonies.
Presents epics and high-level user stories to the team to enable discussion, estimation, refinement, and alignment on delivery approach.
Drives stakeholder conversations to clarify business context, customer needs, outcomes, dependencies, assumptions, constraints, and delivery expectations.
Serves as the primary product point of contact for assigned UXL consumers, contributors, and stakeholder groups, communicating priorities, timelines, risks, dependencies, and trade-off decisions clearly.
Partners with Business Analysts, where applicable, to elaborate requirements, document business scenarios, refine acceptance criteria, and ensure story readiness while remaining accountable for backlog priority and product decisions.
Documents product flows, use cases, workflows, and capability expectations to support consumer onboarding, adoption, and shared team understanding.
Applies working knowledge of API-driven product delivery, GraphQL concepts, and UXL capabilities to support effective requirement definition and solution alignment.
Partners with Engineering and Architecture to validate feasibility, clarify solution options, and ensure product requirements are technically actionable.
Supports QA and engineering teams in clarifying test scenarios, regression scope, validation expectations, and acceptance criteria alignment, and validates completed functionality against business intent.
Uses stakeholder feedback, product usage, operational insights, and outcome measures to identify backlog improvements and product optimization opportunities.
Contributes to team development through knowledge sharing, mentoring, adoption of best practices, and communicates assigned product area KPIs, adoption, performance, and delivery outcomes to leadership and stakeholders.