Senior Product Owner

CNA•Chicago, IL

7d•$72,000 - $141,000

About The Position

You have a clear vision of where your career can go. And we have the leadership to help you get there. At CNA, we strive to create a culture in which people know they matter and are part of something important, ensuring the abilities of all employees are used to their fullest potential. An individual contributor that serves as the customer proxy to the Agile team within the agile process and is the final authority for decisions regarding priority, The Senior Product Owner is an individual contributor who serves as the customer proxy for one or more Agile development teams supporting Corporate Legal, Claims, and Compliance. The Senior Product Owner is the final authority for decisions regarding priority, business value, and functionality for work delivered by the team(s), ensuring outcomes align with enterprise objectives as well as legal, regulatory, and policy requirements. The Senior Product Owner analyzes complex, cross‑functional business processes spanning Legal, Claims, Compliance, Technology, and Operations, and translates them into clear, well‑defined features and integrated user stories using industry‑standard Agile practices. They apply pragmatic and adaptive delivery approaches to balance speed, quality, and risk across domains with differing regulatory, legal, and operational constraints. In close partnership with Corporate Legal, Claims, and Compliance stakeholders, the Senior Product Owner ensures regulatory, contractual, risk, and policy considerations are incorporated into product discovery, backlog prioritization, and acceptance criteria. They proactively identify cross‑domain dependencies, risks, and impacts, and work collaboratively to surface and resolve them early in the delivery lifecycle. In partnership with the Scrum Master, the Senior Product Owner monitors delivery and quality metrics, identifies opportunities to improve team effectiveness and product outcomes, and validates that delivered functionality meets defined business value expectations across Legal, Claims, and Compliance. The Senior Product Owner typically supports one to two Agile teams, depending on initiative complexity. They operate within a Scaled Agile Release Train (ART) as part of a broader Product Management organization. They maintain ownership of features and user stories while ensuring alignment across business strategy, technology execution, and legal and compliance obligations.

Requirements

Strong executor, proven across complex initiatives
Champion for the adoption of new Agile technologies and methodologies
Ability to build and maintain collaborative relationships with stakeholders
Highly collaborative with good conflict resolutions skills
Proven ability to enact change quickly
Willingness to develop Agile team members by inspiring, encouraging and providing constructive feedback
Solid leadership skill
Proven ability to work directly with Product Management, business stakeholders and technical/product teams
Domain knowledge of solutions being developed
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience
Typically a minimum of five years as a Product Owner or equivalent role
Experience with insurance or finance based products

Nice To Haves

Applicable certifications preferred (e.g. SAFe PO/PM, CSPO or PSPO)

Responsibilities

Supports one to two Agile Scrum teams on initiatives of medium to large complexity
Owns, defines, and prioritizes the team backlog, establishes story acceptance criteria, drives content via prioritized user stories, obtains customer validation and accept stories, ensuring that the solution effectively addresses overall program priorities.
A thought leader in Scrum ceremonies (such as daily standups, sprint review meetings, retrospective meetings, cross-team coordination, and etc.), alongside the Scrum Master, ensuring that Scrum Teams adhere to the Scrum values of courage, focus, commitment, respect and openness in delivering high quality solutions.
Fosters an environment of continuous improvement / learning.
Leading by example, facilitates Product Backlog Refinement including reviewing and updating backlog item definition and developing acceptance criteria and value statements, providing information to the team so they can establish technical feasibility and scope estimates, analyzing ways to split backlog items into smaller chunks of incremental value, helping to inform the enablers required to support new features and capabilities, and establishing their capacity allocation.
Builds customer and user insights into all stages of the Scrum planning and execution process, ensuring the continuous validation of stories with Customers and business users.
Proactively analyzes metrics, and recommends changes to the product based on data from feedback loops
Inspire and motivate a team where the members constructively challenge each other, have a sense of ownership, and advocate for the right long-term decision making.
Builds a trusting and safe environment within the team, customers, and other stakeholders.
May collaborate with Product Managers and other Senior Product Owners and other Product Owners, to ensure Stories align to value, goals and objectives of overall program priorities.
May perform additional duties as assigned.