Staff IT Product Owner

EchoStar•Centennial, CO

About The Position

This role is for a Staff IT Product Owner responsible for defining and driving the product vision for an Agentic AI development tool. The tool aims to provide engineers with the capabilities to build autonomous, multi-step reasoning agents for various customer experience applications. The Product Owner will partner with CX leadership to identify customer journey friction points and ensure the AI platform has the necessary capabilities to address them. Key responsibilities include establishing KPIs for the AI platform, managing the product backlog in Jira, leading Agile ceremonies, and collaborating with engineering teams on architectural foundational work and the development of safety features. The role also involves driving the roadmap for human agent integration with AI agents and mentoring junior Product Owners.

Requirements

10+ years in Product Management or Product Ownership, with at least 5+ years operating at a Senior or Staff level managing highly technical, platform, or infrastructure products
Proven experience shipping Generative AI, LLM, or Machine Learning products; strong understanding of Agentic AI concepts (RAG, vector databases, prompt engineering, agent orchestration frameworks like LangChain or AutoGen)
Expert-level proficiency in Jira; you know how to structure complex programs in Jira, manage technical debt vs. feature delivery, and write crystal-clear user stories for backend/AI engineers
Deep understanding of CX ecosystems, contact center technologies (CCaaS), CRM platforms, and customer support workflows
Ability to engage in deep technical architecture discussions; you don't need to write code, but you must understand APIs, microservices, system latency, and data pipelines
Exceptional ability to manage up to the VP/C-level while maintaining deep credibility with engineering squads
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), SAFe PM/PO, or equivalent Agile certifications

Nice To Haves

Experience with cloud-native AI services, particularly the AWS AI stack (Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, AgentCore)
Previous experience building internal developer platforms (IDP), SDKs, or APIs where developers were the primary end-users

Responsibilities

Define and drive the product vision for the Agentic AI development tool, ensuring it provides engineers with the capabilities to build autonomous, multi-step reasoning agents (e.g., automated support resolution, hyper-personalized outreach, human-in-the-loop handoffs)
Partner with CX leadership to understand major friction points in the customer journey and ensure the AI platform possesses the capabilities (API integrations, RAG pipelines, Guardrails) needed to solve them
Establish KPIs for the AI platform itself (developer velocity, system uptime, agent hallucination rates) and link them to downstream CX metrics (deflection rate, average handle time, NPS)
Act as the ultimate owner of the platform backlog in Jira; break down highly complex, ambiguous AI initiatives into well-structured Epics, User Stories, and tasks
Utilize Advanced Roadmaps, JQL, and Jira dashboards to track cross-sprint dependencies, forecast delivery of complex ML models, and provide transparent reporting to executive stakeholders
Lead backlog grooming, sprint planning, and sprint reviews; clearly define acceptance criteria for non-deterministic AI features (e.g., "The agent must correctly route the intent with 95% confidence")
Work daily with Senior/Staff AI Engineers, Data Scientists, and Backend Engineers to prioritize architectural foundational work (e.g., prompt management systems, memory/context windows, tool-use/function calling)
Prioritize the development of guardrails, compliance checks, and PII redaction features within the tool to ensure all customer-facing agents operate safely and securely
Drive the roadmap for tooling that allows human CX agents to seamlessly take over from, monitor, and provide feedback to AI agents
Serve as a subject matter expert in Agile delivery for AI products; mentor junior and mid-level Product Owners across the CX organization