IT Product Owner - Innovation

Costco Wholesale Corporation • Issaquah, WA

43d

About The Position

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite our size and explosive international expansion, we continue to provide a family, employee centric atmosphere in which our employees thrive and succeed. This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world and the secret of Costco's success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented in articles from a variety of publishers including Bloomberg and Forbes. Our employees and our members come FIRST. Costco is well known for its generosity and community service and has won many awards for its philanthropy. The company joins with its employees to take an active role in volunteering by sponsoring many opportunities to help others. Come join the Costco Wholesale IT family. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts. We are building the next generation retail environment where you will be surrounded by dedicated and highly professional employees. Product Owners are responsible for defining requirements, assisting with the overall product roadmap / vision, and driving value at the scrum team level. Product Owners work closely with teams and are the "voice of the customer", ensuring the needs of the end-user are incorporated into the product from design to deployment. Product owners are responsible for the authoring of functional user stories which are used to support the day to day development of new features and capabilities. This Innovation Product Owner will partner closely with Product Managers, as well as cross-functional Business and CDS stakeholders, to determine and guide innovation concepts that align to business goals. The role will own industry sensing for specific business domains, define the discovery roadmap through close engagement with stakeholders, and focus on conceptualizing and validating novel capabilities and solutions that meet determined business objectives. The Product Owner will then collaborate with a cross-functional team of Product Managers, Technologists, Delivery Leads and Engineers to rapidly build prototypes and test hypotheses, establishing clear metrics to measure the viability, impact and value of these innovations. Through this function, the Product Owners will bridge the gap between emerging technology capabilities and business needs, ensuring innovation efforts are aligned with key strategic business outcomes. If you want to be a part of one of the worldwide BEST companies "to work for", simply apply and let your career be reimagined.

Requirements

• 3+ years' experience in business relationship management, including with Executive level stakeholders
• Experience within, or working closely with, business domains such as Supply Chain, Merchandising, Membership and/or Digital
• Experience working closely with senior Business and CDS stakeholders to understand domain specific strategies, goals and pain points.
• Strong understanding of emerging technologies and technology platforms to enable assessment of technical feasibility and trade-offs with other technologists and engineers.
• Proven experience and ability to clearly and effectively communicate, both written and verbally, to varied audiences, including senior leadership.
• Experience designing and overseeing rapid experimentation cycles, including ability to structure a prototype effectively to quickly validate or invalidate key business assumptions and determine value
• Proven experience in measuring initiative viability and impact. Must be able to define clear, and quantifiable metrics (KPIs, OKRs) for innovation concepts to assess feasibility and determine business value.
• Expert ability to translate high-level concepts into detailed, and actionable specifications for Operations and Lab teams.
• Proven expertise managing complex projects, and collaborating with cross-functional teams.
• Deep understanding of business requirements elicitation pursuant to specific programs/projects involved.
• 3+ years' experience working with emerging technologies, within the Retail industry is preferred
• Exceptional attention to detail and outstanding organization and research skills.
• Proficient in User Story creation.
• Expertise in utilizing standard documentation tools/utilities.
• Scheduling flexibility to meet the needs of the business, including evenings, weekends, holidays, and 24/7 on-call coverage on a rotational basis.

Nice To Haves

• Ability to adapt and be comfortable with ambiguity
• 3+ years' experience leading strategic product planning or delivery of innovative solutions across business domains such as Supply Chain, Merchandising, Membership and/or Digital
• Deadline oriented and capable of self-management.
• Strong work ethic, demonstrated attention to detail, excellent time management and organizational skills.
• Ability to work both independently and within a close team environment.
• Ability to listen to and understand business needs.

Responsibilities

• Acts as the primary liaison between the Innovation team, CDS partners and the Business. Proactively engages with stakeholders to understand domain specific strategic goals, market challenges, and domain pain points.
• Stays current on emerging technologies, market trends, and competitive landscapes to identify new opportunities.
• Brings new ideas to the team to inform the innovation backlog.
• Facilitates brainstorming sessions, defining the scope and requirements for rapid prototypes, and guides proof-of-concept initiatives to validate or invalidate solution hypotheses.
• Translates complex business goals or challenges into clear, testable hypotheses, as well as a prioritized roadmap and backlog of innovation-oriented user stories, research tasks, and proof-of-concept initiatives.
• Defines key metrics for each innovation effort to measure viability, impact, and feasibility. Analyzes prototypes and proof-of- concept initiative results, synthesizing learnings to inform subsequent efforts and pivot the roadmap as needed.
• Communicates progress, key learnings, and validated solutions to business stakeholders and CDS leadership. Advocates for promising solutions and facilitate the handoff of validated concepts to a product delivery team for scaling.
• Defines and communicates the minimum viable product (MVP) for a given application / product and the supporting release plans.
• Collaborates with Business and CDS stakeholders to define new and or enhanced product requirements and functionality.
• Works continuously / daily with teams to provide answers, feedback and direction on work items, enablers, user stories, etc.
• Collaborates across teams to define the sprint plan based on the priority outlined within the product vision and roadmap.
• Refines product requirements based on the input obtained through industry sensing, showcases and demos.
• Drives the execution of user acceptance testing (UAT) activities with support from business and technology team members.
• Supports and participates in program level ceremonies including product increment (PI) planning sessions with input and consultation from Product Managers and Leadership stakeholders.
• Performs functional reviews as part of sprint demos and showcases along with the Product Manager and Delivery Manager.

Benefits

• paid time off
• health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance
• health care reimbursement account
• dependent care assistance plan
• short-term disability and long-term disability insurance
• AD&D insurance
• life insurance
• 401(k)
• stock purchase plan

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Industry: General Merchandise Retailers
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees