Product Owner

M3 (www.m3as.com) is a leading provider of hospitality-specific software solutions, delivering cloud-based tools for hotel accounting, financial reporting, labor management, payroll, and business intelligence. Built by hoteliers for hoteliers, M3 empowers hotel owners, operators, and management companies to streamline back-office operations, reduce costs, gain real-time insights, and drive portfolio performance across thousands of properties in North America and beyond. Description Summary: As a Product Owner, you will serve as the tactical driver of product execution, translating the product manager’s strategic vision into actionable deliverables. You will own backlog prioritization, user story creation, requirement clarification, and sprint alignment to ensure development teams deliver high-quality solutions that align with business goals. A background in accounting and/or finance is required to ensure solutions support the financial integrity of our customers and resonate with both internal and external stakeholders. Essential Duties:
The duties listed below are the essential functions of this position, and they may change as the needs of the company demand. All associates are expected to do what is necessary to get the work done and to cooperate fully with their supervisor’s requests for additional or altered duties.

• Define, prioritize, and maintain the product backlog, ensuring the highest-value work is delivered first.
•  Define and deliver AI-powered or agentic product experiences, including workflows, actions, guardrails and success criteria
• Write user stories with clear acceptance criteria, leveraging customer journeys, prototypes, and mock-ups. Collaborate with BAs to refine stories for development readiness.
• Serve as the key contact for requirement alignment with Scrum teams, reducing ambiguity and enabling efficient delivery.
• Ensure user acceptance testing validates that features meet both business and financial requirements before release.
• Partner closely with Product Managers, BAs, Engineering, QA, Design, and GTM teams to ensure smooth execution across delivery and release cycles.
• Act as the primary point of contact for tactical product-related decisions, ensuring alignment with stakeholder needs and business priorities.
• Support release communications and notes (automation encouraged where possible) and participate in defect review meetings and decisions.
• Incorporate customer feedback, market analysis, and competitive insights into backlog refinement and prioritization.
• Provide “train the trainer” support, ensuring internal teams have the knowledge needed to support customers (not delivering training directly).
• Maintain clear, current documentation including backlog artifacts, feature specifications, and release plans.
• Participate in ongoing market research, customer interviews, and financial workflow validation to refine product priorities.
• Other duties as assigned.

Education/Training/Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field required.
• 3–6 years of experience as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, or equivalent role in software development.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment where emerging AI capabilities require rapid discovery, definition, testing and iteration.
• Demonstrated commitment to customer discovery and validation throughout development to ensure solutions are valuable, trustworthy and easy to use. 
• Strong understanding of accounting and finance workflows; prior experience in SaaS accounting, ERP, or back-office systems highly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to create clear user stories, define acceptance criteria, and manage complex backlogs.
• Proficiency with Agile methodologies and tools (e.g., ADO, JIRA, Confluence).
• Excellent collaboration skills, able to receive feedback, compromise effectively with cross-functional teams, and deliver products that delight both internal and external customers.
• Skilled communicator, capable of bridging business needs with technical execution.
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), SAFe POPM, or equivalent agile certification preferred.