Technical Product Owner
Qode•Columbia, SC
•Hybrid
About The Position
The Technical Product Owner will lead the strategy, roadmap, and delivery of AI-enabled and cloud-native enterprise platform capabilities. This role requires strong product leadership, hands-on technical collaboration, and the ability to translate complex business needs into scalable platform features. A critical component of this role is deep experience in the Retirement / IPA / 401(k) industry, including recordkeeping workflows, plan sponsor and participant experiences, contribution processing, compliance rules, trading and settlement flows, and integration with custodians, payroll providers, and retirement plan administration systems. The ideal candidate brings experience with SaaS products, microservices architectures, API-driven ecosystems, emerging AI technologies, and retirement-domain platforms.
Requirements
- 7–10+ years of product management or product ownership experience.
- Strong experience in the Retirement / IPA / 401(k) industry.
- Strong experience with SaaS platforms, enterprise systems, or cloud-native architectures.
- Hands-on experience writing user stories, acceptance criteria, and functional requirements.
- Solid understanding of APIs, REST services, microservices, authentication (OAuth, SSO, JWT), and system integrations.
- Working knowledge of SQL and cloud platforms.
- Proven ability to lead Agile teams and deliver complex technical products.
- Excellent communication, analytical, and stakeholder-management skills.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with AI-powered platforms, workflow automation, or low-code/no-code ecosystems.
- Familiarity with DevSecOps, test automation tools, or enterprise digital transformation.
- Certifications such as CSPO, PSPO, SAFe PO/PM, or equivalent.
- Experience working in consulting or client-facing delivery environments.
- Experience with generative AI products, AI agents, and LLM-based platforms.
- Understanding of Prompt Engineering, RAG, AI evaluation metrics, and governance.
- Exposure to workflow automation, test automation, and enterprise AI solutions.
- Familiarity with human-in-the-loop workflows and model evaluation processes.
Responsibilities
- Define and evolve the product vision aligned with enterprise business goals and retirement platform modernization initiatives.
- Translate strategic objectives into a clear, actionable roadmap for 401(k), IRA, and retirement plan administration capabilities.
- Identify opportunities for innovation, automation, and platform enhancements across participant, sponsor, and advisor experiences.
- Conduct market, customer, and competitive analysis within the retirement and recordkeeping ecosystem.
- Partner with leadership on long-term product strategy and investment planning for retirement platforms.
- Own and manage the product backlog, ensuring clarity, prioritization, and readiness.
- Write detailed Epics, Features, User Stories, and Acceptance Criteria for retirement workflows such as contributions, distributions, loans, rollovers, compliance testing, and plan configuration.
- Prioritize work using frameworks such as RICE, WSJF, and MoSCoW.
- Define workflows, business rules, edge cases, and functional specifications for recordkeeping and IPA processes.
- Maintain product documentation, process flows, and wireframes.
- Work closely with engineering to understand technical constraints and architectural considerations.
- Participate in architecture discussions for cloud-native, microservices-based platforms supporting retirement plan data models and transaction lifecycles.
- Collaborate on API design, integration requirements, and system interoperability with custodians, payroll providers, and plan administration systems.
- Support technical decision-making by providing business context and prioritization rationale.
- Lead backlog grooming, sprint planning, and release readiness activities.
- Participate in daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
- Ensure sprint goals align with business priorities and roadmap commitments for retirement platform enhancements.
- Track delivery progress, remove blockers, and validate completed work against acceptance criteria.
- Engage business stakeholders to gather requirements and align expectations across retirement operations, compliance, and client-facing teams.
- Present product updates to senior leadership and cross-functional teams.
- Coordinate across Engineering, QA, UX, DevOps, Sales, and Customer Success.
- Serve as the primary liaison between technical teams and business partners.
- Partner with QA to define test scenarios and validate functionality, including retirement plan rules, contribution validations, and regulatory workflows.
- Review UAT results and ensure delivered features meet business expectations.
- Support release planning, documentation, and go-live readiness.
- Define product success metrics and KPIs.
- Analyze customer usage data to identify optimization opportunities across participant and sponsor journeys.
- Drive data-informed decision-making across roadmap and feature prioritization.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
