Product Owner

Austin, TX, United States

ABOUT US:

Kestra Holdings offers industry-leading wealth management platforms for independent wealth management professionals nationwide. With an innovative culture that celebrates independence, the company seeks to redefine the future of the advisory industry through superior service, cutting-edge technology, and preeminent resources that every financial professional needs to succeed in the market now and in the years to come.

Kestra Holdings companies collectively oversee $123 billion in assets under administration (AUA) and support more than 2,400+ independent financial professionals across the country in delivering comprehensive securities, trust, and investment advisory services to their clients. Located in the "Silicon Hills" of Austin, Texas, Kestra Holdings offers an experience as unique as the city in which it operates.

The product owner liaises between business stakeholders and the development team, ensuring that the technical solutions align with Kestra's business objectives. A successful product owner knows how to balance strategy, governance, and implementation and effectively facilitate productive conversations between all impacted stakeholders - executives, engineers, analysts, product teams, and external customers.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Execute product vision and strategy.

Develop a deep understanding of Kestra's product strategy and the end-to-end data and workflow of Kestra Financial.

Communicate and translate the product vision and strategy to the scrum teams.

Translate the requirements of large initiatives into smaller, actionable pieces that can be delivered in increments and then work to allocate resources for each initiative.

Ensure epics are effectively defined into stories and shovel-ready (sized) in time for the PI planning event.

Lead breakout sessions in PI Planning events.

Prioritize features and enhancements in the product backlog based on PI event commitments.

Facilitate the scrum grooming session and maintain a healthy scrum team backlog.

Own the grooming of user stories and acceptance criteria.

Ensure the correctness of user stories, acceptance criteria, and epics.

Deliver requirements artifacts referenced by epics and user stories as needed (e.g., data requirements/data mapping, workflow diagrams, user persona, etc.).

Participate in design reviews and confirm or challenge design decisions pertaining to meeting user experience and business objectives.

Ensure solutions can effectively address program priorities (features and enablers) while maintaining technical integrity.

Managing unplanned work vs committed work.

Document and communicate release notes to business stakeholders.

Participate and monitor production deployment activities.

Provide bi-weekly status reports for the Product & Tech steering committee.

Act as primary liaison between stakeholders and the scrum team.

Coordinate dependencies with other POs across a portfolio of applications and products.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND/OR ABILITIES: Well-versed in agile practices such as Scrum and Kanban.

Understand the principles of the SAFe Agile framework.

Robust business analysis and requirements gathering skill set.

Ability to define clear and concise business requirements in Epics and Stories.

Ability to facilitate business and/or technical decisions at a team and product level.

Ability to remain flexible and open-minded in changing priorities, requirements, and circumstances.

Capacity to analyze complex situations, identify patterns, and evaluate multiple perspectives to make sound decisions.

Aptitude for breaking down large, ambiguous problems into manageable components, defining clear objectives, and developing practical solutions.

Skill in making timely, well-informed decisions based on available information, insights, and analysis.

Experience working on projects that span multiple organizations and business units.

Effective communication skills with the ability to align the organization on complex decisions.

Proficiency in both verbal and written communication to articulate ideas, convey expectations, and align stakeholders.

Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, leverage diverse expertise, and foster a culture of cooperation to address ambiguity collectively.

Ability to understand and empathize with various stakeholders' perspectives, concerns, and motivations, including customers, team members, and business partners.

Self-starter who embraces a culture of transparency and trust and thrives in an environment of rapid change and growth.

Commitment to ongoing learning, self-improvement, and skill development to stay updated on industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies.

Strong technical skills in data structures, modeling, and data mining.

Ability to create queries to validate and sign off on data deliverables.

Experience as a Product Owner on Agile teams, ideally with Microsoft Azure technologies.

Familiar with current best practices in diverse, relevant technologies, including containerization, microservices, automation CI/CD, Azure, and related cloud technologies.

PARTNERSHIP AREAS: Project Management

Data Science

Analytics & Business Intelligence

Information Technology

Domain-area teams include finance, marketing, compliance, operations, etc.

EDUCATION AND/OR EXPERIENCE: Bachelor's degree in technology (in Computing/Software/Technology related subject) or business

Experienced user of standard analyst collaboration tools (Confluence, JIRA)

INTERNAL APPLICANT POLICY:

Internal applicants must be in good standing and have a minimum of 1 year of service with Kestra. Internal applicants must also have a minimum of 1 year service in current role unless approved by EVP.

BENEFITS:

Full health, vision, dental. 401(k) plans along with a host of voluntary plans such as car insurance, legal services and more.

DISCLOSURE

By applying to a job at Kestra Financial, Inc., you are agreeing to the following statements: You acknowledge that if hired, Kestra Financial, Inc. may, obtain and use background information concerning your credit, character, general reputation, personal characteristics, work habits, performance and experience for evaluation for your potential employment.

It is the policy of Kestra Financial to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, identity or expression, age, disability, marital status, citizenship, national origin, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. Kestra Financial prohibits any such discrimination or harassment.