Product Owner/Business Analyst - Schaumburg, IL (Hybrid - onsite T, W, Th)

Type: Contract to hire (12-month contract to start because they wouldn’t be able to convert to permanent until next year)

Background/Summary:

• One of our direct clients headquartered in Schaumburg has been recognized as one of Crain’s Best Places to Work in Chicago and has an opening for a Sr. Product Owner to join their team. Great work culture and opportunity for career growth. The reason the job is open is the Product Owner who was in this role was promoted to Product Manager.
• Reporting to the Manager of Business Information Technology, the Product Owner/Business Analyst will use a high level of product knowledge and critical thinking to prioritize user stories and development and ensure successful communication and implementation of all agreed-upon initiatives and their outcomes.

Role and Responsibilities:

• The BA/PO will serve as a liaison between business units, technology, and support teams to facilitate agile product development.
• This role directly interfaces with software development, architecture, UX, and operations experts to represent the voice of the customer/user and is responsible for defining, documenting, and clearly articulating requirements to the delivery team.
• Act as subject matter expert for assigned area, performing the role of product owner on an agile team.
• Lead the creation of functional and nonfunctional requirements in collaboration with product management and engineering teams.
• Prioritize and refine backlog and work with engineering to design and build the product.
• Create drafts of features and user stories with acceptance criteria to seed product backlog in order to begin the grooming process.
• Represent the voice of the customer by developing deep expertise and empathy for the customers and consumers of our services and software products.
• Transform the business requirements into actionable features, stories, and prototypes or images that follow a product growth plan.
• Communicate in an effective, timely, and efficient manner with business owners and the agile delivery team, ensuring the successful delivery of software during each iteration.
• Develop rapport and trust with business owners, key stakeholders, and a highly technical development team.

Proficiency Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree (highly preferred)
• Agile Certification Preferred (ex: CSPO)
• 5 years of product or project development experience
• Multiple years of experience in a Product Owner and/or Sr. Business Analyst role (or similar) in a hybrid agile/waterfall software development environment.
• Candidate should have experience planning/designing/driving process from inception, rather than following a pre-determined “plan”.
• Strong working knowledge of agile methodology, user stories, and iterative development
• Must have basic SQL query (doing select statements to validate data).
• Looking for someone who has experience working on custom applications.