Product Owner II – Portfolio Operations

Sierra Nevada Corporation•Englewood, CO

13d•Hybrid

About The Position

Are you excited about helping teams adopt modern product practices and guiding new Product Owners as they step into their roles? As a Product Owner within Portfolio Operations, you will work alongside emerging product leaders to show them how to confidently own their backlog, shape iteration priorities, and deliver meaningful value. In this role, you won’t just manage a team’s backlog – you’ll actively coach new Product Owners through our transition to the product operating model, helping them understand decision rights, strengthen readiness, and embed predictable flow. Partnering closely with Product Managers, Capability Owners, Agile professionals, and delivery teams, you’ll play a hands-on role in accelerating team maturity by demonstrating the craft of product ownership, modeling effective practices, and ensuring each team has the support it needs to succeed in a modern product centric environment. As SNC's corporate team, we provide the company and its business areas with strategic direction and business support spanning executive management, finance and accounting, operations, human resources, legal, IT, information security, facilities, marketing, and communications.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
10+ years of IT experience, with at least 2+ years in a leadership role.
Relevant experience can be considered as a substitute for the required educational qualifications. In the absence of a degree, a minimum of 14 years of related experience is required.
Higher level relevant degree may substitute for experience.
Demonstrated experience managing complex IT projects.
Strong background in IT infrastructure and operations.
Demonstrated experience managing complex projects and teams.
Extensive knowledge of service-oriented architecture, web, mobile, and cloud solutions.

Nice To Haves

Excellent communication and leadership skills.
Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.
Advanced certifications such as SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Program Management Institute (PMI) Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP), or similar.
Experience with product management or product operating model.
Experience with cloud technologies and platforms.
Experience in the Aerospace and Defense industry.
Knowledge of enterprise software and application development.

Responsibilities

Own and prioritize the team backlog, ensuring clarity and alignment to defined outcomes
Write high‑quality user stories and acceptance criteria; coach new Product Owners in these practices
Lead backlog refinement, demonstrating effective techniques for story slicing and readiness
Manage high-level stakeholder relationships, ensuring clear communication and alignment with business objectives.
Partner with new Product Owners to teach prioritization, tradeoff decision-making, and flow discipline
Provide clarity to engineers and stakeholders throughout development
Support predictable delivery by guiding teams in iteration planning and acceptance
Coach new Product Owners in connecting backlog decisions to roadmap themes and enterprise capability needs
Collaborate closely and facilitate alignment with Product Managers on feature readiness and cross-team dependencies
Track team-level value delivery and model outcome-based thinking
Maintain healthy team operating rhythms and promote adoption of modern product practices
Demonstrate strong servant leadership and reinforce a culture of teamwork, transparency, and collaboration