Product Owner, R&D (Remote-Hybrid: Twin Cities or St Peter, MN)

Are you a product management professional seeking an impactful job with a mission-driven organization? Scholarship America is seeking a Product Owner to join our team and help us eliminate barriers to educational success.

Scholarship America combines best-in-class scholarship administration with a nonprofit mission. We are developing relevant, impactful products that grow our business and help more students overcome financial need so they can pursue their higher education goals. If you have a passion for cross-functional teamwork and for leading business initiatives that truly change lives, consider joining the Scholarship America team. Learn more about the Product Owner position and apply below.

The Product Owner, focused on R & D, will work specifically on taking a product from incubation to execution, fostering the strategic partnership between business and technology. The Product Owner is responsible for representing the voice of the customer and the stakeholder in a product development team. They work with the Product Manager to define the product vision, strategy, and roadmap. The R&D team is seeking a highly skilled Product Owner to join the ranks. They also prioritize the product backlog, write user stories, and accept or reject the product deliverables. They communicate with the development team, the executive sponsor, and the stakeholder(s) to ensure that the product meets the user needs and the business value. This position will be a subject matter expert for one or more services and will work closely with business partners and other subject matter experts in the definition, development, testing, training, implementation, and support of functional requirements.

The Product Owner will also provide and facilitate cross-organizational support as needed. They will run multiple projects simultaneously, using creative and innovative methods for analysis, design, documentation, and tool selection. The incumbent will need to understand and document integration points and dependencies with other systems and will utilize simple queries to check the status of a service line.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:

• Contribute to the successful on time, on budget and in scope delivery of business initiatives.
• Accurately represents the needs of the internal or external clients, business owner(s) and other stakeholders to the product team(s) and software development teams and vice versa.
• Lead efforts to solicit, review, document, and refine requirements via interviews, workshops, group meetings, and/or existing systems documentation or procedures.
• Manage new initiatives within the context of an organization-wide future state of technology.
• Develop core roadmap to meet and manage the five-year vision.
• Define user personas and develop user stories, use cases with actors and interactions, wireframes, sequence diagrams, and data flow diagrams.
• Understand and effectively communicate to product, project, and business teams all the data elements utilized by the service.
• Derive business requirements from use cases in an agile environment.
• Create, revise, validate, and maintain business flow maps, business requirements, business rules, user stories, user flows, test plans, and acceptance tests.
• Produce "as is" and "to be" process flow diagrams.
• Define conceptual technical and/or non-functional requirement documents to translate business requirements into technical information that developers can use.
• Document and maintain traceability of requirements in agreed-upon systems (e.g. AHA, etc)
• Work with users and QA, lead the development of test cases based on documented requirements and perform user testing during sprints and as part of formal testing activities.
• Collaborate with other product owners to identify all cross-system interfaces, dependencies and requirements.
• Analyze the impact of new business requirements/user stories on the current application from both a business and technical perspective.
• Participate in daily stand-up meetings with Product, IT, and other business partners to facilitate the understanding, clarification, and implementation of requirements in an Agile development environment.
• Support the enabling and utilization of the Product Lifecycle
• Contribute and support the Product Council governance functions
• Accountable for presenting timely, accurate project and product information to all levels of stakeholders at Scholarship America.
• Groom user stories from the product backlog and plan releases with the IT, Product Owners, or functional stakeholders.
• Working with business owners to drive consensus across multiple stakeholders.
• Provide LOEs and plans for Product Owner activities.
• Facilitate cross-functional relationships, ensuring all stakeholder input is considered.
• Adapt to changing priorities and procedures.

REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• 5+ years' experience in the Product Management field required with a demonstrated track record of product development and management from initial concept, requirements gathering, development/deployment planning, implementation, launch, testing, analysis, iteration, to end-of-life planning.
• Experience participating in the monetization of solutions that meet market or partner demands
• Experience with using data to inform change and decision-making
• Experience successfully operating in a Lean-Agile environment
• Proven success in efficiently and effectively developing use cases, business requirements and test cases.
• Proven ability to effectively and often simultaneously communicate at operational, technical, and strategic levels to internal and external customers.
• Demonstrated ability to work on a team and achieve results in a virtual/remote team environment.
• Ability to demonstrate creative problem-solving, thoughtful product scoping, and flexibility in a fast-moving environment.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Visio, and Project).
• Experience managing projects that are grant-funded with grantor requirements.
• Excellent analytical skills and detail oriented.
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and oral communication, time management, and presentation skills.
• Proven track record of facilitating cross-departmental issue identification, problem-solving, and resolution.
• Highly customer centric, service oriented with the ability to understand, execute and meet customer's expectations.

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Ability to coach and counsel partners on designing programs that support students of greatest need.
• Experience providing customer service to or supporting diverse populations.
• Cultural awareness to appreciate varied lived experiences and the potential impact on educational achievement.
• Bachelor's degree.

Full Pay range: Exempt ($62,800 - $78,500 - $94,200)

This is the pay range for our staff in this position, from entry to fully independent and proficient in the role utilizing our propriety systems and processes. The candidate selected for this position will be offered a wage applicable to their background and skill set as aligned to our business.

Application deadline: Monday, January 20 (by midnight ET)

At Scholarship America, our team members are motivated by our core values: Student Impact, Teamwork, Inclusion and Curiosity. Our vision is to empower an America where those with the most need have the opportunity to thrive through equitable pathways to education and training, and we are seeking fantastic team members to make that happen.

We know the best person for the job could be anywhere, and that's why this position can work in a hybrid manner from either our office in Bloomington or Saint Peter, MN or remotely within the continental United States. Our employees enjoy a team-based, flexible work schedule, allowing them to flex around our core hours of Monday-Friday from 8:00 am - 4:30 pm Central Time. Scholarship America is committed to our team's work/life balance, and our strong learning and development culture supports knowledge growth and professional development for all employees across foundational and job-specific skills.

Scholarship America offers employees a robust total rewards package, focused on supporting their health and well-being now and in the future. We offer comprehensive choices for insurance (medical, dental, vision, basic life), disability (short-term & long-term), flexible spending accounts (medical & dependent care), and a 403(b) retirement fund with a 3% company match.

In addition to schedule flexibility, we also provide paid time away from work (vacation, sick, personal, up to fifteen paid holidays annually), plus employee & dependent educational reimbursement programs which support our overall mission.

Details on our company mission, vision, values and goals can be found at www.scholarshipamerica.org.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.

We Have One Passion. Every Student.