Product Owner

Kardex•Cincinnati, OH

About The Position

As a Product Owner at Kardex AutoStore North America, you will be responsible for defining, prioritizing, and executing product features, ensuring alignment with business objectives, and maximizing value delivery. You will work closely with stakeholders, development teams, and product managers to translate customer needs into clear, actionable requirements. Your role will be pivotal in driving product development, backlog management, and ensuring seamless collaboration between cross-functional teams. About Kardex’s software solution An automated warehouse revolves around the effective orchestration of hardware and software systems. Kardex provides highly reliable and precise mechanical solutions but also an intelligent and configurable warehouse execution system (WES). Kardex’s software solution for AutoStore is a proven modular software platform, leveraging over 30 years of research and development to seamlessly interface with any host system. Our software development team, centrally located in Cincinnati, OH, focuses exclusively on AutoStore integration, applicable subsystems and processes which provides the most reliable and comprehensive AutoStore software solution on the market.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
Excellent communication skills
Proven experience (4+ years) as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, or similar role.
Strong understanding of Agile methodologies and Scrum framework.
Experience with backlog management tools (e.g. Jira, Azure DevOps).
Knowledge of software development life cycles (SDLC) and product development principles.
Strong ability to translate business needs into technical requirements.
Leadership
Motivation to be a key member in setting up a new business (startup environment)
Entrepreneurial thinking and acting
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
Ability to establish effective working relationships across the boundaries and cultures.
Self-driven, result oriented with positive outlook to success.
Advanced trouble-shooting ability
Clear focus on high quality and ensuring all the customers' needs are met

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with warehouse execution systems (WES) or automation software is a plus.
Experience supporting and developing Warehouse management systems is preferred.

Responsibilities

Feature Design & Writing: Collaborate with Product Managers and cross-functional teams (Engineering, UI/UX) to gather requirements, understand feature specifications, and document product functionality.
Story Writing: Own the creation and refinement of user stories to ensure development teams have clear, actionable tasks and acceptance criteria.
Feature Design Handoff: Lead the transition of feature designs to development teams, ensuring alignment with business requirements.
Backlog Management: Evaluate, prioritize, and maintain the product backlog based on business value, ROI, customer impact, and alignment with the product vision.
Stakeholder Engagement: Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to balance competing priorities and ensure shared understanding of objectives.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Leverage data (velocity, cycle times, unplanned work) to better prepare for backlog grooming, support release planning, and identify process improvements.
Scrum Ceremonies: Participate in Agile ceremonies, providing guidance and clarifications on backlog items.
Design Acceptance Criteria: Define and validate acceptance criteria to ensure product quality and usability.
Development Implementation Support: Collaborate with developers to ensure requirements are well understood and implemented correctly.
Test Case Review: Assist in reviewing test cases to validate feature functionality.
Product Feature Verification: Ensure that implemented features align with product roadmap and result in high-quality releases. Oversee release preparation to identify and address potential risks and gaps.
Release Tracking & Documentation: Maintain and update product documentation (including release notes and specifications) and manage release activities to ensure smooth deployment and effective stakeholder communication.