Product Owner

FCS Financial, ACA • Jefferson City, MO

6d • $80,000 - $130,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

As Product Owner, you will be responsible for defining, prioritizing, and delivering product capabilities across the lending lifecycle. You’ll own the product backlog and roadmap, translating stakeholder needs, regulatory requirements, and market insights into high-value solutions. This role ensures delivery is aligned, measurable, and supports efficient, compliant, and scalable lending operations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Systems, Finance, or related field (or equivalent experience)
• 3+ years of product owner or product management experience within the lending lifecycle.
• Strong understanding of lending lifecycle processes and credit operations.
• Experience with vendor-supported SaaS or loan origination/CRM platforms.
• Ability to translate business needs, regulatory requirements, and technical capabilities into prioritized backlogs.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and drive alignment across cross-functional teams.
• Familiarity with risk, audit, and compliance practices in financial services.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Systems, Finance, or related field, or equivalent experience
• 3 years of product owner or product management experience across the lending lifecycle
• Or an equivalent combination of education and experience sufficient to perform the essential functions of the job.
• Experience delivering outcomes on vendor-supported SaaS, configuration-heavy platforms (e.g., CRM/loan origination platforms such as nCino/Salesforce (preferred, not required), including rules/workflow/permissions configuration, coordinating impacts across integrated platforms, and managing dependencies through release governance.
• Experience participating in vendor and platform run-cost decisions (e.g., licensing, renewals, support models), including basic TCO analysis and cost/value trade-offs.
• Familiarity with financial institution risk management, audit/exam processes, and control documentation through prior participation or exposure.
• Ability to translate stakeholder needs, regulatory/control requirements, and vendor/platform capabilities into a prioritized backlog aligned to measurable business outcomes.
• Strong analytical, facilitation, relationship management, and influence skills to drive decisions across business and technical stakeholders with clear oral and written communication.
• Working knowledge of lending lifecycle process and practices
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills;
• Ability to translate complex data concepts into business-friendly insights
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and meet deadlines

Nice To Haves

• nCino/Salesforce experience preferred, not required

Responsibilities

• Own and manage the product roadmap and backlog for your product focus.
• Partner with stakeholders to understand needs, prioritize work, and drive decision-making.
• Collaborate with development teams in Agile ceremonies to ensure successful delivery.
• Support UAT, release readiness, training, and rollout coordination.
• Incorporate regulatory, risk, and control requirements into product design and priorities.
• Use data, feedback, and operational insights to enhance product performance.
• Own product feature definition and roadmap execution for an assigned product area, informed by stakeholder needs, business priorities, and market dynamics.
• Facilitate discovery and product definition activities, including stakeholder interviews, user feedback sessions, and journey exploration to identify problems, pain points, and intended outcomes.
• Map and refine user journeys to identify improvement opportunities and inform feature design and prioritization.
• Define epics and user stories with clear, testable acceptance criteria to guide delivery.
• Establish expected business outcomes and success measures for product features and enhancements.
• Incorporate insights from market, vendor, and ecosystem trends into actionable product and roadmap options.
• Evaluate, prioritize, and sequence capabilities using structured, transparent approaches that balance value, risk, effort, dependencies, and timing.
• Ensure regulatory, risk, and ICFR considerations are incorporated into product definition and prioritization.
• Partner with Delivery and stakeholders to assess vendor roadmap items, releases, and upgrades for business impact and operational readiness.
• Define business readiness expectations for releases, including documentation, knowledge transfer, and Service Desk enablement.
• Partner with stakeholders to understand needs, define priorities, and align on intended outcomes.
• Facilitate decision‑off discussions; document decisions, owners, and timelines.
• Communicate roadmap and delivery status, risks, and dependency impacts to appropriate audiences.
• Incorporate operational feedback (e.g., issues, trends, root causes) into product priorities.
• Contribute to user enablement and adoption readiness for releases, including training coordination, communications, and rollout planning in partnership with stakeholders and Delivery.
• Participate in Agile ceremonies to clarify intent, priorities, and acceptance criteria during delivery.
• Ensure priorities consider end‑to‑end customer and employee journeys and cross‑system impacts.
• Partner with delivery teams and shared services (engineering, QA, architecture, integration, platform teams) to align on scope, sequencing, and dependencies.
• Accept completed work against defined acceptance criteria and support business and control sign‑offs occur.
• Support UAT planning and defect triage in partnership with stakeholders and Delivery.
• Coordinate deployment readiness and release execution activities in partnership with Delivery teams.
• Partner with application development and technical operations teams to evaluate technical trade-offs and scalability considerations.
• Ensure product decisions consider system performance, reliability, and technical debt implications.
• Incorporate applicable policy, regulatory, and control requirements into product priorities and acceptance criteria.
• Partner with Compliance, Security, Risk, and Audit stakeholders to support governance and readiness needs.
• Ensure appropriate documentation, approvals, and traceability are maintained for product releases.
• Support remediation of findings, issues, or control gaps related to the product area.
• Use operational, audit, and incident insights to inform product improvements.

Benefits

• Competitive Salary: $80,000 – $130,000 with outstanding incentive opportunities linked to Association performance.
• Growth Opportunities: Opportunities to lead strategic initiatives and shape lending technology direction.
• Comprehensive Benefits: A highly competitive benefits package designed to support your health, financial well-being, and work-life balance.
• Flexible Work Environment: Hybrid options available within FCS Financial’s Branch locations in Missouri.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level