Product Owner - W2 Role

Job Title: Product Owner - W2 Role 

Location: Phoenix, AZ – Onsite

Position Overview

Client is seeking a strategic and highly analytical Product Owner to lead the ideation, definition, development, and delivery of innovative software products within the FinTech and lending space.

The Product Owner will serve as the critical bridge between business stakeholders, product, engineering, QA, compliance, operations, and UI/UX teams, translating complex business and regulatory requirements into clear, actionable, and testable product specifications.

The ideal candidate combines strong Product Ownership, Business Analysis, workflow design, Agile/Scrum, and technical requirements experience, preferably within financial services, lending, banking, payments, or other regulated environments.

Key Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Roadmap

Drive product initiatives from concept through implementation.

Facilitate product discovery sessions with business stakeholders, customers, and technical teams.

Identify operational pain points, customer needs, market opportunities, and opportunities for process improvement.

Translate business objectives into product roadmaps and prioritized delivery plans.

Define MVP scope and iterative release strategies.

Maintain traceability between business objectives, requirements, features, and delivered functionality.

Participate in competitive analysis and product innovation initiatives.

Requirements & Product Definition

Create and refine Epics, Features, User Stories, functional specifications, and acceptance criteria.

Develop detailed domain-level feature definitions.

Translate complex business requirements into clear technical deliverables.

Define testable acceptance criteria for business rules, calculations, workflows, and system outputs.

Partner with Engineering to validate technical feasibility and resolve requirements ambiguity.

Work closely with QA to ensure requirements are testable and adequately covered.

Workflow & Process Design

Design and document end-to-end business and user workflows.

Develop workflow diagrams and process documentation.

Support workflows involving areas such as:

KYC/OFAC screening

Accreditation verification

Subscription documentation

E-signature processes

Lending and financial operations

Reporting and reconciliation

Partner with UI/UX teams to develop intuitive, scalable, and compliant user experiences.

Data Accuracy, Compliance & Controls

Establish acceptance criteria for calculated outputs and financial data.

Develop and validate golden datasets for testing.

Define reconciliation and tie-out requirements against source systems.

Establish appropriate tolerance thresholds for calculated values.

Ensure product functionality supports data accuracy, auditability, traceability, reporting, and record-retention requirements.

Incorporate compliance, security, and regulatory requirements into product design rather than treating them as downstream activities.

Agile Delivery

Own and prioritize the product backlog.

Participate in backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and release planning.

Work closely with engineering and QA throughout the SDLC.

Clarify requirements and acceptance criteria throughout development.

Support release readiness and production implementation.

Monitor delivered functionality against business objectives and product requirements.

Cross-Functional Leadership

Act as the primary product liaison between business, engineering, QA, compliance, operations, and leadership.

Facilitate stakeholder discussions and decision-making.

Resolve competing priorities and requirements.

Communicate product vision, roadmap, priorities, and delivery status.

Establish and monitor product success metrics and KPIs.

Mentor and provide guidance to Product Owners, Business Analysts, or Product Engineers as applicable.

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business, or a related discipline.

5+ years of experience in Product Management, Product Ownership, Business Analysis, Product Engineering, or software delivery.

Strong experience working in Agile/Scrum environments.

Proven experience creating:

Epics

Features

User Stories

Acceptance Criteria

Functional Specifications

Process/User Workflows

Strong understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Ability to translate complex business requirements into actionable technical requirements.

Excellent analytical, communication, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills.

Demonstrated ability to work effectively with Engineering, QA, UI/UX, Compliance, and Operations teams.

Preferred Qualifications

2+ years of experience leading or mentoring Product, Business Analysis, or Product Engineering teams.

FinTech, banking, lending, payments, treasury, financial operations, or SaaS experience.

Experience working in regulated financial environments.

Knowledge of state lending regulations, securities regulations, SOC 2, audit controls, data retention, and compliance requirements.

Experience with financial calculations, reconciliation, data validation, or source-to-target tie-outs.

Experience with workflow/process tools such as Miro, Lucidchart, or Sensus Process Management.

Experience with Azure DevOps, Jira, Confluence, Figma, or similar tools.

Understanding of APIs, system integrations, cloud platforms, and modern web/mobile architectures.

Experience working with distributed engineering teams.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The strongest candidate will be a Product Owner / Senior Business Analyst / Technical Product Owner who can operate comfortably between business and technology.

They should be able to take an ambiguous business problem, understand the underlying process and regulatory requirements, define the desired product behavior, document workflows and acceptance criteria, work with engineering and QA through implementation, and ultimately ensure the delivered solution meets the business objective.

Key competencies:

Product Ownership | Business Analysis | FinTech | Lending | Agile/Scrum | Requirements Management | User Stories | Acceptance Criteria | Workflow Design | SDLC | Data Validation | Reconciliation | Compliance | KYC/OFAC | API Integrations | Stakeholder Management | Azure DevOps/Jira | UI/UX Collaboration