Product Owner

NMDP • Minneapolis, MN

13h • $105,000 - $135,000

About The Position

The Product Owner defines product direction and development priorities in support of NMDP’s mission to save lives through cellular therapy. As a member of the Product and Agile Teams, the role is accountable for the success, health, and readiness of the product backlog. The Product Owner partners with Product Managers, stakeholders, and customers to understand needs and ensure delivery of the most valuable work, translating product strategy, vision, roadmap, and outcomes into clear, actionable work.

The role works closely with assigned product and development teams to maintain alignment, mitigate dependencies, and promote enterprise-wide standards. Acting as a bridge between business and technology, the Product Owner collaborates with leadership to define and prioritize roadmap features, captures actionable requirements, prepares user stories and acceptance criteria, supports iterative delivery of high-quality solutions, and advances the product vision for search at NMDP.

Requirements

• Ability to work within Scrum and other Agile methodologies to drive successful, collaborative teams.
• Ability to communicate effectively in writing and verbally, translating business and technology concepts for technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Customer-first focus and strong knowledge of functional and business areas.
• Strong work ethic and commitment to quality, continual improvement, and excellent customer service; growth mindset and willingness to learn, test ideas, and pivot.
• Ability to solve complex problems and make sound decisions amid ambiguity, risk, and uncertainty, while taking initiative and maintaining forward progress.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities through negotiation, delegation, and conflict resolution; collaborative and action-oriented approach.
• Ability to maintain confidentiality when handling sensitive information and records, and to build enterprise-wide capabilities and scalable solutions.
• Understanding of connections across multiple applications in a federated enterprise architecture, including the work to be done and the customers it serves.
• Ability to accommodate infrequent travel and work extended hours as required to meet deadlines or support after-hours product releases.
• Two years of previous experience as a product owner or in a related role.
• Four years of experience defining and prioritizing requirements in an Agile environment.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Business Administration, Engineering, or another related field; equivalent related experience and/or education may be substituted upon evaluation.
• Experience working in a highly integrated technical environment.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Product Management to set development priorities, define strategic initiatives, and manage the portfolio backlog in support of digital properties and enterprise goals.
• Collaborate with stakeholders and customers to gather and validate problems, needs, and jobs to be done.
• Manage iterative and incremental delivery of value to internal and external users, prioritizing impactful features and enhancements based on customer needs.
• Own planned and unplanned work while evaluating business value and trade-offs to inform prioritization decisions.
• Lead backlog refinement and prioritization using operational, market, and user data; identify and validate hypotheses, assumptions, and risks.
• Drive planning and release activities, set expectations for delivery timelines and functionality, and participate in sprint planning, demos, and retrospectives.
• Communicate delivery progress, sprint status, and release updates to ensure transparency and alignment.
• Engage proactively with stakeholders, respond to inquiries, and make decisions that maintain delivery velocity and team momentum.
• Maintain an understanding of business processes and customer needs, mitigate impediments, and remain open to new approaches and emerging technologies.
• Translate product strategy into actionable tasks and user stories aligned with the product vision.
• Communicate the product vision and business value to the development team.
• Write and maintain clear, complete, testable, consistently formatted user stories with acceptance criteria, context, dependencies, and supporting details.
• Use team capacity and historical velocity to support sprint planning and delivery forecasting, adjusting scope or sequencing with the Agile team.
• Review completed work against acceptance criteria, make timely acceptance decisions, and help ensure increments meet customer and business needs.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, life and disability, accident, critical illness, hospital, well-being, legal, identity theft, and pet benefits for regular, full-time employees.
• Retirement benefits.
• Paid time off and holidays.
• Leave plans.
• Incentive plans for eligible employees.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed