Product Owner - Platform Team

RTI International•Durham, NC

16h

About The Position

RTI International is seeking a Product Owner to join its expanding Platform Team, a strategic technology enablement group that provides reusable platform patterns and operational support for research computing, analytics, application development, and data-intensive work. The team develops, operates, and maintains shared cloud, application, analytics, and research computing capabilities, including Kubernetes-based services, secure data environments, CI/CD and Infrastructure-as-Code automation, and integrated tools such as JupyterHub, RStudio/Posit, Airflow, REDCap, Stata, and Databricks. The Product Owner works with multidisciplinary teams—including platform engineers, software and data developers, security and infrastructure teams, project leaders, and non-technical stakeholders—to support and improve existing platform capabilities and contribute to new services. The role coordinates requirements, service intake and adoption, agile delivery, operational processes, stakeholder communication, usage and cost analysis, and alignment with security, compliance, and governance expectations. The position contributes under the direction of senior product owners and platform leadership.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree and at least 3 years of relevant experience, a master's degree and at least 1 year of relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Experience with enterprise-scale shared technology platforms, stakeholder engagement and service delivery, product lifecycle, operations and governance, cost modeling, agile delivery, and cross-functional technology coordination.
Ability to develop professional documentation for product service offerings, roadmaps, lifecycle plans, and other key documentation across multiple systems.
Ability to translate business, research, technical, operational, security, and compliance needs into actionable requirements.
Familiarity with Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) practices and work-tracking software.
Understanding of development methodologies for cloud-based platforms, including SDLC, AI-DLC, DevSecOps, and CI/CD practices.
Analytics skills to assess product usage, customer feedback, cost trends, operational performance, and adoption patterns.
Strong verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to explain technical and operational concepts to diverse audiences.
Ability to balance customer needs, operational stability, compliance requirements, cost efficiency, and service delivery priorities.
Strong problem-solving, facilitation, and decision-making skills.
Commitment to operational excellence, service reliability, documentation quality, and customer-focused support.
Ability to work independently while contributing to cross-functional teams and organizational objectives.
Attention to detail, accountability, accuracy, and continuous learning.
Must be legally authorized to work in the United States and must not require now or in the future sponsorship for employment visa status.

Nice To Haves

Experience with cloud-hosted technology platforms used in scientific research, healthcare, or other public-sector technology domains.
Experience supporting security and compliance activities, including systems validation, for regulated technology services. Examples include contributing to system security plans and authorization packages, coordinating evidence collection and audit requests, and tracking remediation of findings in environments aligned to FISMA Low/Moderate, HIPAA, or similar regulatory frameworks.

Responsibilities

Gather requirements from project teams, software teams, IT, business stakeholders, and platform engineers, and translate needs into actionable platform work.
Coordinate intake, onboarding, communication, adoption, and prioritization for teams using shared platform services.
Help define platform support models, service expectations, escalation paths, and operational procedures; maintain knowledge base materials.
Coordinate with platform engineering teams on issue resolution, backlog refinement, user communication, and service improvements.
Support agile delivery by writing epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria and participating in sprint planning, demos, retrospectives, and roadmap reviews.
Track and report platform usage, customer feedback, operational performance, and adoption trends to identify improvement opportunities.
Assist with cost modeling, usage analysis, budgeting, forecasting, chargeback, showback, and project cost estimation for shared services.
Work with cybersecurity, compliance, infrastructure, and governance teams to help ensure platform services meet organizational, security, and regulatory expectations.
Maintain awareness of and communicate inherited platform controls, project-level responsibilities, compliance boundaries, and regulated research environment considerations.
Develop and maintain reusable platform reference materials, onboarding documentation, training content, communications, and stakeholder updates.
Document ownership boundaries across platform, infrastructure, security, software, data, and project teams.
Support stakeholder alignment, service roadmap coordination, and cross-functional decision-making under senior product owners and platform leadership.