Product Owner III

National Student Clearinghouse•Herndon, VA

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Specialist III, Product Owner plays a pivotal role in translating customer and business objectives into actionable technology requirements. In this position, you will research, communicate, negotiate, and document both business and technical requirements. You’ll work independently and collaborate with subject matter experts to gather and analyze data, document findings, define requirements, and provide support throughout the product lifecycle—including development, testing, training, implementation, and ongoing system maintenance. As a standing leader within agile scrum and Kanban teams, you will manage and support multiple initiatives simultaneously. You’ll employ creative, innovative approaches to data collection, analysis, research, design, documentation, and go-to-market strategies to inform product decisions. Your experience spans diverse product roles, including SaaS and web-based solutions, enabling you to coach junior team members and provide cross-functional support as needed. The ideal candidate understands the critical importance of documenting interconnections, integrations, and dependencies across products, technologies, processes, and systems. You proactively seek ways to enhance system flexibility while minimizing reliance on technical resources and future maintenance. Highly organized and process-driven, you continuously work to improve existing systems. Technically adept, you can perform analysis, gather intelligence, and build simple queries to check logs, aggregate data, and deliver actionable insights. Currently, this is a remote-first position, and this position may be required to periodically work on-site at our office and the frequency would depend on the department/division's requirements. Therefore, candidates must either reside within a reasonable distance to commute to our office or be willing to travel to our office in Herndon, when required.

Requirements

Bachelors degree in technology, business, or related field. A combination of education and experience, including through military service, will also be considered.
5 years of related experience in soliciting and defining requirements for mission critical business applications.
Experience with: Agile Methodology as a Product Owner or Business Analyst.
Embedding quality controls in work processes to assure uninterrupted operation.
Analyzing data for composing targeted and concise requirements and translating strategic and tactical goals.
Demonstrated ability to: Exemplify strong collaboration.
Solicit, define, and write business requirements from research, customer, market, and internal feedback to translate into user stories.
Have product knowledge and its impact to other product(s).
Identify tradeoffs in decisions and drive resolution of challenges across the organization.
Model solutions for a business process.
Demonstrated proficiency: Working with Agile principles, processes, driving decision making, and aligning the team/organization on goals and objectives.
Communicating and negotiating effectively and confidently with internal stakeholders from all levels of the organization, and external stakeholders to represent the product, department, and company.
Managing and prioritizing multiple initiatives to ensure successful, timely completion and issue-resolution.
Working with Microsoft Office Suite, and/or other collaboration tools.
Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication, and effective presentation skills.
Demonstrates the Clearinghouse’s core competencies: customer focus, optimizes work processes, communicates effectively, collaborates, and is open and authentic.
Must live within a commutable distance to Herndon, VA (preferred) or in one of the Clearinghouse's approved States for hiring purposes.
Must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.
Must be at least 18 years old.

Nice To Haves

Knowledge of Clearinghouse services and applications.
Knowledge of education related data standards, such as IMS Comprehensive Learner Record or Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) or other industry-based or government-based data exchange standards.
Experience with: Software development management tools (Rally, JIRA, Confluence).
CRM and enterprise tools.
Performing complex data analysis using analytic tools and database queries.
Master's degree or PhD in technology, business, or related field or additional combination of advanced education and experience, including through military service.
Project Management skills to successfully manage a project from ideation through delivery with timelines and all required wireframes and documentation.
Critical thinking skills to successfully distill complex processes and data.
Strategic, interpersonal, and operational competencies required to lead and champion a project with a clear vision.
Task tracking and management, through an ability to project manage with minimal supervision, resulting in successfully managing day to day projects.
Project Planning & Scoping – Can independently create and support development of project plans, timelines, milestones, and deliverables aligned to business objectives
Task Tracking & Execution – Manages day-to-day project activities; tracks progress against plan and escalates risks or delays early.
Self-Direction & Accountability – Operates with a high degree of ownership; proactively identifies issues and opportunities and identifies possible solutions without needing constant direction.
Resilience & Follow-Through – Maintains focus in dynamic environments and ensures completion of tasks despite obstacles and ambiguity by proposing solutions not presenting problems .
Prioritization & Task Management – Ability to independently assess competing priorities, sequence work effectively, and meet deadlines with minimal oversight.
Acts with urgency – Begins work without delay (< 2 hours when possible), meets agreed deadlines and proactively keeps managers updated in writing of work completed and timelines that are at risk, communicates blockers and changes early.
Documents and communicates - in writing – meeting summaries, decisions, all actions and schedules for work to be performed based on decision.
Utilizes AI tools such as Co-pilot and Gemini.

Responsibilities

Demonstrate the Clearinghouse's core competencies: Customer Focus, Optimizes Work Processes, Collaborates, Communicates Effectively, and Be Open and Authentic.
Work closely with the Business Owner/Product Manager to understand the needs of the market/industry and define the scope for initiatives.
Lead efforts to solicit, review, document, and refine requirements via interviews, workshops, group meetings, and/or existing systems documentation or procedures.
Prioritize the backlog, including refinement and preparation (all stories business, enablers, and technical).
Maintain a backlog to have a minimum of 2-3 sprints worth of groomed work.
Contribute to the successful on-time, within-budget and in-scope delivery of business initiatives.
Define and develop user stories, wireframes, sequence diagrams, and data flow diagrams.
Produce “As Is” and “To Be” process flow diagrams.
Derive business requirements from use cases in an Agile environment.
Create, revise, validate, and maintain business flow maps, business requirements, business rules, user stories, user flows, etc.
Analyze the impact of new business requirements/user stories on the current application from both a business and technical perspective.
Collaborate with the Scrum Master and Scrum Team to determine estimated delivery dates, dependencies, team velocity, challenges, quality assurance, user acceptance and overall performance of teams.
Collaborate with Product Managers and other business owners to identify all cross-system interfaces and build out the requirements.
Accurately represent the needs of the business owner(s) to scrum teams and vice versa.
Participate in various Agile ceremonies.
Understand and effectively communicate to scrum teams and business owners all the data elements utilized by the service and understand their service details and processes
Create and foster positive and open communication channels between external and internal stakeholders.
Foster a culture of collaboration, teamwork, innovation, and service excellence at the Clearinghouse and help resolve any product or project issues.
Position may be required to perform other duties as required.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
Life and disability insurance benefits
Health care, dependent care, and limited purpose flexible spending accounts
Health savings account with annual employer contributions
Voluntary supplemental health plans for Accident and Hospital Indemnity coverage
Infertility coverage
401k matching contribution program
Paid leave program consisting of vacation, sick, and personal time
Paid holidays
Paid parental leave
Paid military leave
Reimbursed for basic wholesale company and roadside assistance memberships
Buy back on portions of unused accrued vacation
Employee Education Assistance Program
LinkedIn Learning subscription
Mental health support (up to eight free therapy sessions)
Well-being reward benefits
Eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)