Technical Product Owner

Stifel•Saint Louis, MO

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Technical Product Owner owns the backlog for shared platform capabilities, such as CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, and developer self-service tooling. This role represents the voice of platform consumers, including application teams and downstream platform teams, and ensures the platform delivers secure, reliable, and scalable capabilities aligned with enterprise standards. The Technical Product Owner partners closely with Cloud Platform Engineering, product teams, security, and architecture to define and prioritize platform capabilities. The role operates two to four sprints ahead to ensure predictable, high-quality delivery of the paved-road platform.

Requirements

Strong analytical and prioritization skills in technically complex domains.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, particularly with engineering audiences.
Demonstrated ability to translate platform and infrastructure needs into actionable technical user stories.
Sufficient depth in cloud-native infrastructure and CI/CD concepts to evaluate feasibility and scope stories accurately.
Comfort working across engineering, security, and architecture teams.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years of combined experience in product ownership, product management, business analysis, or software engineering.

Nice To Haves

Experience in financial services or another regulated industry.
Experience working in Agile, Scrum, or SAFe environments and experience supporting infrastructure, DevOps, or cloud engineering teams.
Experience gathering developer feedback and converting insights into platform improvements.
SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM) or Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO).
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner or AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, or willingness to obtain within 12 months.
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), and cloud platforms (AWS preferred).
Prior exposure to platform governance, guardrails, or shared service models, preferred.

Responsibilities

Own, refine, and prioritize the platform backlog, balancing developer experience, security, reliability, and scalability.
Translate platform capabilities and guardrails into clear, well-defined technical user stories and enablers.
Ensure backlog items are right-sized, technically feasible, and sprint-ready while maintaining one to two sprints of production-ready stories for Iteration Planning.
Partner with Product Managers to define platform outcomes, success metrics, and roadmap alignment.
Evaluate technical feasibility and challenge implementation approaches where the tradeoffs warrant it.
Gather feedback from developers and engineers through office hours, onboarding sessions, and direct engagement.
Clearly communicate platform standards, guardrails, and roadmap direction.
Collaborate with Security, Architecture, and Compliance to ensure platform requirements are understood and adopted.
Validate completed platform work against defined acceptance criteria, architectural intent, and security standards.
Support platform demos, release communications, and enablement efforts for consuming teams.
Provide day-to-day clarification to engineering teams during implementation of platform features and guardrails.
Support the long-term platform roadmap, including evolution of CI/CD standards, infrastructure-as-code patterns, and self-service tooling.
Identify opportunities to incorporate successful downstream platform extensions into company-wide patterns.