Product Lead

FlightSafety International•Broken Arrow, OK

About The Position

The Product Lead is the IT-side owner of delivery-ready product execution for their assigned domain. Embedded within engineering teams and partnering daily with the Delivery Lead, this role bridges business intent and delivery execution – ensuring that what teams build is well-defined, well-refined, and aligned to the value the Product Manager has articulated.

Requirements

5+ years of progressive professional experience as an IT Business Analyst, Product Owner, or comparable role on medium to large-scale software delivery initiatives
Demonstrated experience owning a product backlog or requirements pipeline in an agile delivery environment
Experience working embedded within or alongside engineering delivery teams
Experience with both waterfall and agile methodologies
Demonstrated ability to own and prioritize a product backlog, making sequencing and trade-off decisions that maximize value delivery
Proficiency with epic-to-story decomposition and the discipline to enforce readiness standards without creating unnecessary overhead
Familiarity with value-based prioritization frameworks and the ability to apply them in a transparent, defensible way
Advanced expertise in requirements elicitation, analysis, and documentation from diverse stakeholder groups
Strong user story writing, process mapping, and acceptance criteria development skills
Ability to develop business cases including options analysis, benefits, risks, and cost/benefit assessment
Ability to evaluate technology solutions against business requirements and communicate trade-offs to non-technical audiences
Demonstrated ability to work as a peer partner to a Delivery Lead, owning the product lane without overstepping into delivery management
Experience facilitating refinement sessions, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives in an agile environment
Ability to make real-time product decisions during delivery without requiring constant escalation
Exceptional ability to communicate complex requirements and technical trade-offs to both business and technical audiences
Proven ability to build trusted relationships with business stakeholders, engineering teams, and product leadership
Strong facilitation, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills in ambiguous or fast-moving situation
Sufficient technical fluency to engage meaningfully with engineering teams and evaluate trade-offs from a product perspective
Proficiency with agile delivery tools (Azure DevOps / TFS preferred) and standard productivity applications

Nice To Haves

Professional certification in Agile methodology preferred

Responsibilities

Own backlog management for assigned delivery teams within the scope of approved epics, sequencing and maintaining a healthy pipeline of ready work
Make tactical prioritization decisions about story ordering, dependency sequencing, and sprint content in partnership with the Delivery Lead and engineering teams
Balance competing demands within the backlog – features, enhancements, technical debt, and production support – to maximize value delivery
Communicate backlog priorities and rationale to delivery teams, ensuring engineers understand not just what they are building but why
Receive epic-level handoffs from the Product Manager and own decomposition into well-formed user stories and tasks
Ensure all work entering a sprint meets the definition of ready: clear acceptance criteria, identified dependencies, understood technical approach, and validated alignment with the Product Manager’s intent
Identify and surface scope, dependency, or feasibility issues at the epic level before they become delivery problems
Elicit, analyze, and validate business and functional requirements in collaboration with the Product Manager, business stakeholders, and engineering teams
Lead product discovery activities – including stakeholder engagement and solution validation – to ensure work is grounded in real business need before entering the pipeline
Translate business needs into clear, delivery-ready functional requirements, user stories, process flows, and acceptance criteria
Translate technical constraints and trade-offs back to the Product Manager and business stakeholders in accessible terms
Serve as the primary product contact for engineering teams day to day – available to answer questions, clarify requirements, and make real-time scope decisions
Partner with the Delivery Lead as a peer in the delivery pod. The Product Lead owns the what; the Delivery Lead owns the how and when. Neither role is subordinate to the other
Attend and facilitate sprint reviews, translating technical progress into business value language for stakeholders and the Product Manager
Track product performance against defined KPIs post-delivery, contributing data to value realization reviews