Owner, IT Product

KeHE Distributors, LLC•Naperville, IL

About The Position

At KeHE, we’re obsessed with creating solutions, unboxing potential, and serving others – and it all starts with you. As an employee-owned distributor of natural and organic, specialty, and fresh products, we’re committed to making a positive impact and scaling our success together. With a culture that fosters development and opportunity, you’ll be embarking on a career that’s moving forward. When you join KeHE, you’re becoming part of a team that is a force for good. The Product Owner (PO) leads the product strategy, roadmap, and execution for a defined product area, ensuring alignment with business and enterprise goals. This role supports enterprise B2B digital platforms, including eCommerce for our Retailers and solutions for Supplier within the food industry. The Product Owner is accountable for prioritizing and communicating work to the business, ensuring the team delivers solutions that drive measurable outcomes. Partnering closely with VP/Directors and Product Managers, the Product Owner ensures product initiatives support broader organizational strategic objectives while collaborating with engineering, design, business stakeholders and cross-functional teams to ensure effective delivery, adoption and continuous improvement.

Requirements

Expert in understanding of business processes, user needs, and KPIs.
Strong knowledge of Product Centric Delivery model and Agile practices.
Proven ability to translate strategic objectives into actionable plans and priorities.
Exceptional communication, stakeholder management skills and relationship-building skills, with a focus on cultivating and maintaining strong professional connections.
Proficient in product discovery, backlog management, and agile delivery.
Strong analytical mindset with experience leveraging data to drive decisions.
Comfortable and effective working in a fast-paced and dynamic environment with competing priorities.
Collaborative, resilient, and proactive approach to problem-solving.
Bachelor’s degree in Business, Technology, or related field.
5+ years of experience in Product Ownership, Business Analysis, or related roles
Experience working in Agile / product-centric delivery environments
Strong understanding of backlog management, user story writing, and prioritization techniques
Proven ability to work across business and technology teams
Strong communication, facilitation, and decision-making skills

Nice To Haves

Certifications in Product Ownership or Scrum (preferred).

Responsibilities

Develop and communicate product strategy and vision, translating business objectives into actionable roadmaps and prioritized backlogs.
Translate product vision, strategy, and roadmap into well-defined epics, features, and user stories.
Make day-to-day scope and priority decisions to maximize value delivered by the team.
Lead structured product discovery, translating insights from user interviews, process mapping, and business analysis into clear user stories and acceptance criteria.
Fully own and maintain the product backlog, prioritizing using value, risk, dependencies, and team capacity.
Maintain a clear near-term roadmap, balancing new features, technical debt, bugs, and enablers.
Develop and demonstrate a deep understanding of business processes, personas, pain points, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and user workflows.
Drive sprint clarity, answer team questions quickly, review and accept work, and support predictable delivery.
Manage diverse stakeholders, clarify expectations, handle conflict, and deliver clear status updates.
Collaborate closely with Engineering and UX to ensure requirements are feasible, clearly understood, and testable.
Accept or reject completed work based on defined acceptance criteria.
Track delivery and output metrics (e.g., velocity, story completion, adoption, user feedback) to inform prioritization, measure success and define future KPIs.
Ensure delivered capabilities meet quality standards, acceptance criteria and business intent.
Demonstrate strong ownership, collaboration, resilience, and a customer-focused product mindset.
Other duties and projects as assigned.