Product Owner-HYBRID

Location: West Greenwich, RI Salary: Negotiable Description:
BrightStar is looking to add a Product Owner to its retail sales channel organization, supporting retail terminals, operating systems, and application products. The Product Owner will work closely with product managers and existing product owners to help manage product execution and delivery.

Key Candidate Profile

The hiring manager emphasized the following priorities:

• Previous experience working in a Product Owner role.
• Strong experience with Jira, including writing and managing user stories.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and prioritization practices.
• Experience with Confluence and/or Polarion is highly desirable.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills to work effectively with established product and development teams.

While not required, candidates with the following backgrounds may stand out:

• Technical or software development experience.
• Testing or QA experience.
• Project management experience.
• Experience with ProductPlan.
• Retail, POS, or similar technology domains.

Team Structure

The Product Owner will join:

• A team consisting of four Product Managers and two existing Product Owners.
• An environment where Product Owners partner closely with Product Managers.
• A structure where Product Managers are intended to be more externally focused while Product Owners concentrate on internal execution and delivery activities.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities

Expected activities include:

• Collaborating with Product Managers to understand requirements.
• Creating and maintaining user stories.
• Entering and managing work items in Jira.
• Supporting backlog activities in partnership with Product Managers.
• Working on assigned products and projects, including both enhancement initiatives and new product development efforts.
• Coordinating closely with internal teams throughout delivery.

Experience Level

• Approximately five years of experience was described as a guideline rather than a strict requirement.
• The target profile is a mid-level Product Owner who can become productive quickly with reasonable support and training.

Current Opportunity Highlights

• The team has workload-driven demand and is expanding its Product Owner practice.
• One of the assignments for this hire is expected to be a new product/project within the company, providing an opportunity to contribute to a product that is new to the organization.

Product Owner Management (Retail Sales Channel)
Position Summary

As a Product Owner within the Product Management Team, you will play a critical role in driving the vision, roadmap execution, adoption, and evolution of products within the Retail Sales Channel Portfolio. This portfolio includes Retail Hardware, OpenRetail, Platform Services, Terminal Platform Management, Retailer-To-Go S2, Retailer Lens, Secure Link, and other retail channel innovations.

Working closely with Product Managers, Engineering, Delivery Teams, and Customers, you will translate strategic product goals into actionable plans and successful product outcomes. As the primary liaison between customers, business stakeholders, and development teams, you will ensure product investments deliver measurable value while enabling retailers to achieve operational excellence and sales growth.

Reporting to the Product Management organization, you will own the product backlog, define release priorities, gather and validate customer requirements, and drive successful product adoption across global customer implementations. The role requires a strong combination of product ownership, customer engagement, technical acumen, and agile leadership.

The ideal candidate is passionate about delivering innovative retail technology solutions, thrives in a customer-facing environment, and is equally comfortable discussing business outcomes with executive stakeholders and technical requirements with engineering teams.
Key Responsibilities
Product Strategy & Roadmap Execution

• Contribute to the development and execution of the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for Retail Sales Channel products.
• Partner with Product Managers to translate strategic objectives into prioritized product initiatives.
• Champion an outside-in approach by incorporating customer needs, market trends, competitive insights, and operational feedback into product planning.
• Support business case development and value realization initiatives for new product capabilities and enhancements.
• Drive alignment between customer requirements and long-term product strategy.

Product Ownership & Delivery

• Own and manage the product backlog for assigned products and platforms.
• Define, refine, and prioritize themes, epics, features, and user stories aligned to strategic objectives.
• Work closely with Scrum Teams to ensure requirements are clearly defined, understood, and successfully delivered.
• Establish release scope and priorities while balancing customer commitments, business objectives, and technical constraints.
• Lead acceptance testing and validation activities to ensure delivered functionality meets business and customer expectations.
• Drive continuous product improvement through customer feedback, analytics, and lessons learned from implementations.
• Monitor product performance and adoption to identify enhancement opportunities and maximize customer value.

Customer Engagement & Product Adoption

• Build trusted relationships with lottery customers and serve as a key point of contact throughout the product lifecycle.
• Lead customer workshops, discovery sessions, product demonstrations, and roadmap discussions.
• Gather, analyze, and document customer requirements, translating business needs into actionable product requirements.
• Support customer implementations by providing product expertise and helping customers maximize product utilization and business value.
• Identify recurring customer needs and bring insights back into the product roadmap and innovation pipeline.
• Drive successful product adoption initiatives and ensure customers realize expected business outcomes.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate with Engineering, Program Delivery, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Security, Legal, and Support teams to ensure successful product outcomes.
• Partner with engineering leadership to align product priorities with development capacity and technical roadmaps.
• Facilitate decision-making among stakeholders while managing competing priorities and evolving business demands.
• Influence teams and stakeholders without direct authority to achieve organizational objectives.
• Foster effective communication and collaboration across business and technical teams.

Product Documentation & Governance

Create and maintain customer-facing and internal product documentation, including:

• Functional Specifications
• Business Process Flows
• Use Cases
• Customer Requirements Documents
• Configuration Questionnaires
• Release Notes
• Product Adoption Materials

Additional responsibilities include:

• Ensuring requirements and product documentation are accurate, complete, and consistent.
• Maintaining governance standards and product documentation throughout the product lifecycle.
• Supporting audit, compliance, and operational readiness activities where applicable.

Qualifications
Required Experience

• 5+ years of experience as a Product Owner in an Agile software development environment.
• Proven experience owning and managing product backlogs, prioritizing work, and delivering technology solutions from concept through release.
• Demonstrated success translating customer requirements and business objectives into themes, epics, features, and user stories.
• Experience working directly with customers, business stakeholders, and development teams to deliver products that drive measurable business value.
• Experience leading customer discovery sessions, workshops, demonstrations, and requirements-gathering activities.
• Proven ability to support product adoption, customer implementations, and change management efforts.
• Experience balancing customer commitments, business needs, and technical constraints in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong understanding of Agile, Scrum, and product development best practices.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• Strong experience gathering, documenting, validating, and managing business and customer requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to define release scope, conduct acceptance testing, and validate delivered functionality against requirements.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Outstanding written, verbal, and presentation communication skills.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence without direct authority.
• Ability to build trusted customer relationships and effectively engage with executive and technical audiences.
• Experience creating and maintaining comprehensive product documentation and governance artifacts.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with retail technology, point-of-sale systems, hardware platforms, SaaS solutions, or enterprise software products.
• Experience supporting large-scale product implementations and customer deployments.
• Knowledge of retail operations, or other regulated industries.(Banking, Insurance, FDA etc..)
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), or similar Agile certification.
• Experience utilizing customer feedback, analytics, and market insights to drive product innovation and continuous improvement.
• Familiarity with Jira, Azure DevOps, Confluence, Miro, or similar product management and collaboration tools.

Core Competencies

• Product Ownership & Backlog Management
• Agile Product Development
• Roadmap Execution & Release Planning
• Customer Engagement & Relationship Management
• Requirements Gathering & Analysis
• Stakeholder Management
• Cross-Functional Leadership
• Product Adoption & Change Management
• Business Process Analysis
• Strategic Thinking
• Technical Communication
• Data-Driven Decision Making
• Continuous Improvement
• Value Realization & Customer Success

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