Technical Specialist, Product Owner

National Student Clearinghouse•Herndon, VA

8d•Remote

About The Position

By joining the National Student Clearinghouse, you can be sure that the work you do now will help shape the future of education and the workforce in the U.S. As the trusted source for higher education data since 1993, the Clearinghouse is the leading provider of transcript and data exchange services, automated enrollment and degree verifications, learner insights and research, and compliance solutions for schools, businesses, and learners nationwide. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Clearinghouse works with nearly 3,600 postsecondary institutions to meet their compliance needs and with thousands of high schools and districts to provide continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics about their alumni. In addition, the Research Center publications inform policymakers and business leaders about student educational pathways. Using our unique combination of data, analytics, and software to drive our mission, security and privacy is paramount. Join us as we continue to invest in our talent and new advanced technologies to unlock the power of data on behalf of all learners. About the Role: The Technical Specialist, Product Owner (A.K.A. Principal Product Owner) uses their leadership and technical skills to align the strategic partnership between business and technology delivery focusing on solutions to meet customer needs and organizational goals. In this role you will be responsible for working with Business Owners, Product Owners and Technology team members, directing a product portfolio backlog, leading product collaboration, communication, negotiation and prioritizing epics and features as prioritized by the business owners based on customer value that will be delivered through a Scaled Agile or traditional Agile framework, collaborating across multiple development and shared service teams development sprints. You will collaborate with Business/Epic owners and lead other Product Owners and subject matter experts to define and manage team development and product launches. We practice Agile Methodologies for development, and this role serves as a standing leader in the Agile scrum teams. You will be responsible for running multiple initiatives at once, and using creative and innovative methods for analysis, design, documentation, and tool selection. Additionally, youll also coach junior team members and provide cross-organizational support, as needed. The successful candidate understands the importance of aligning business value with development capacity, documenting integration points, dependencies with other systems, and negotiating priorities across key collaborators such as with a Program Management Council. This exciting role plays a pivotal part in Agile scrum teams. Currently, this is a remote-first position, and this position may be required to periodically work on-site at our office and the frequency would depend on the department/division's requirements. Therefore, candidates must reside within a reasonable distance to commute to our office when required.

Requirements

Bachelors degree in IT, business, or related field. A combination of education and experience including military service will also be considered.
10 years of combined experience in the education or technology industry.
6 years of experience specifically working in an Agile framework as a Product Owner or Business Analyst soliciting and defining requirements drive consensus across multiple stakeholder groups.
Experience: Embedding quality controls in work processes to assure uninterrupted operation.
Analyzing data for composing targeted and concise requirements and translating strategic and tactical goals.
Performing in a leadership or management/supervisory role, exercising independent judgement, including the ability to lead, motivate, develop, and focus a team.
Have an innovative mindset seeking solutions that are customer centric and meet strategic goals.
Demonstrated ability to: Promote and encourage collaboration.
Prioritize, negotiate, solicit, define, and write business requirements from research, customer, market, and internal feedback to translate into user stories.
Have product knowledge and its impact to other product(s).
Identify tradeoffs in decisions and drive resolution of challenges across the organization.
Model solutions for a business process.
Demonstrated proficiency: Working with Agile principles, processes, driving decision making, and aligning the team/organization on goals and objectives.
Communicating and negotiating effectively and confidently with internal stakeholders from all levels of the organization, and external stakeholders to represent the product, department, and company.
Managing and prioritizing multiple initiatives to ensure successful, timely completion and issue-resolution.
Working with Microsoft Office Suite, and/or other collaboration tools.
Positive and professional attitude with the demonstrated ability to adapt to a dynamic, fast paced industry and environment.
Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication, and effective presentation skills.
Must live within a commutable distance to Herndon, VA.
Must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.
Must be at least 18 years old.

Nice To Haves

Experience with: Working directly with Higher Education or Secondary Education Institutions integrating Clearinghouse services with Institution systems.
Software development management tools (Rally, JIRA, Confluence).
CRM and enterprise tools.
Performing complex data analysis using analytic tools and database queries.
Knowledge of: Clearinghouse services and applications.
Knowledge of education related data standards, such as Postsecondary Electronic Standard Council (PESC), 1EdTech Comprehensive Learner Record, Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) or other industry-based or government-based data exchange standards.
Higher education institution processes & experience with SIS vendor solutions.
Expertise in Data exchange such as REST-XML-EDI.
Current Certified Scrum Product Owner and/or Scaled Agile certification.
Experience working with web data services such as XML, JSON, EDI.
Working knowledge of PESC and ANSI data standards.
Working knowledge and experience working with Accessibility standards such as W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or Section 508 guidelines.

Responsibilities

Demonstrate the Clearinghouse's core competencies: Customer Focus, Optimizes Work Processes, Collaborates, Communicates Effectively, and Be Open and Authentic.
You are customer centric work with Business Owners/Product Managers to interpret market research, identify market rhythms and events, understand customer needs.
Use system and data literacy skills to build customer-centric solutions.
This role must understand the business purpose of the solutions, including how it is being used for a particular service and across the enterprise, how the service creates value for the customer, value for the Clearinghouse and how to prioritize regular development cycles such as quarterly Program Increments.
This role will leverage that knowledge to prioritize features in accordance with business priorities.
Lead efforts to solicit, review, document, and refine requirements via interviews, workshops, group meetings, and/or existing systems documentation or procedures.
Prioritize the Portfolio feature backlog, including refinement and preparation (all features - business, enablers, and technical).
Lead a matrixed team of Product owners to develop a deliverable development plan with a minimum of 2-3 sprints worth of refined work.
Contribute to the successful on-time, within-budget and in-scope delivery of business initiatives.
Approve, present and prioritize proposed epics, features, wireframes, sequence diagrams, and data flow diagrams.
Contribute to and approve As Is and To Be process flow diagrams where appropriate.
Analyze the impact of new business requirements/user stories on the current application from both a business and technical perspective.
Work with business owners to drive consensus across multiple stakeholders.
Collaborate with the Release Train Engineer, System Architect, Business Owners, Product Owners and development leads to determine estimated feature values, delivery dates, dependencies, team velocity, challenges, quality assurance, user acceptance and overall performance of teams.
Collaborate with business stakeholders to ensure development priorities and forecasts align with strategic goals.
Represent the business, product priorities and collaborate on technical alignment discussion during planning sessions and other related Product Owner/Product Management ceremonies.
Accurately represent the needs of the business owner(s) to scrum teams and vice versa.
Document key product decisions during various Agile ceremonies.
Understand and effectively communicate to scrum teams and business owners product priorities during pre-planning, planning and executing of Program Increments / Quarterly Plans.
Create and foster positive and open communication channels between external and internal stakeholders.
Foster a culture of collaboration, teamwork, innovation, and service excellence at the Clearinghouse and help resolve any product or project issues.

Benefits

The National Student Clearinghouse provides a robust benefit program designed to help meet the needs of each employee and their family, both now and in the future.
We offer comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance, as well as life and disability insurance benefits, for employees and their qualified dependents.
Health care, dependent care, and limited purpose flexible spending accounts, as well as a health savings account with annual employer contributions of $300 for employees and $600 for employees who are enrolled with their spouse and/or dependents, voluntary supplemental health plans for Accident and Hospital Indemnity coverage, and infertility coverage are options available for employees to set aside pre-taxed dollars for certain qualifying expenses.
We offer a very generous 401k matching contribution program with the opportunity to defer pre-tax and Roth contributions, as well as catch-up contributions for those who are eligible!
We are proud to offer a competitive paid leave program consisting of vacation, sick, and personal time, as well as paid holidays, up to 3 weeks of paid parental leave during a 12-month period , and up to 5 days of paid military leave per calendar year .
Vacation time will accrue based on length of service, and new full-time hires can accrue up to 13 days of vacation and up to 10 days of sick time per year.
On an annual basis, new employees may use up to 32 hours of accrued sick time as personal time.
Additionally, the Clearinghouse observes at least 15 paid holidays per year, including company year-end close between Christmas and New Years Holidays.
Another perk is that employees have the option to get reimbursed for basic wholesale company and roadside assistance memberships (e.g., Costco and AAA) and to request a buy back on portions of unused accrued vacation based on tenure and certain other qualifications.
Employees can further their education and professional development by using our Employee Education Assistance Program, which establishes reimbursement for qualified education expenses upon successful completion of the program, and leveraging the enterprise-wide LinkedIn Learning subscription.
There are additional employee benefits too, including but not limited to, mental health with up to eight free therapy sessions for employees and their family members and well-being reward benefits.
With the Clearinghouse being an eligible 501(3)(c) nonprofit organization, employees are eligible for service credit towards the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF).