Product Owner (Maternity Leave Interim Position)

Rippleworks; Toronto; Remote; CAD 30,000 - 45,000; Part time

Job summary

Rippleworks is seeking an experienced Product Owner to lead through a transition in product and business. This part-time interim role involves collaborating with the CTO and Product Team to enhance the product platform, ensuring alignment with user, business, and product goals. The ideal candidate is detail-oriented with substantial experience in customer-centric product development and strategic decision making.

Benefits

Generous paid time off

Extended health, dental, vision, and life insurance

Health Spending Account

Flexible work schedule options

Qualifications

• 3-5 years experience in a Product Owner role supporting large-scale B2B/B2C projects.
• Experience with product-led growth approaches and customer engagement.
• Experience with data to inform decision making.

Responsibilities

• Gather requirements through regular customer engagement and feedback.
• Define high-level goals and product strategy with CTO and teams.
• Ensure product backlogs are clear and prioritized.

Skills

Customer-centric mindset

Detail-oriented

Excellent communication

Relationship management

Data-informed decision making

Education

Experience as Product Owner

CSPO Certification

Tools

Jira

Job description

You are an experienced product professional with a customer-focused mindset and experience building product platforms to support growth. You are eager to roll up your sleeves and help lead through an exciting transition in our product and business overall.

You will report to our Chief Technology Officer and partner with them and Product Team members to maximize the development of the platform to deliver on user, product, and business goals.

This role is for you if you are driven by curiosity, passionate about what it means to be customer-centric, and inspired by supporting purpose-driven work.

This is a part-time interim role to cover a 18-month maternity leave. We are looking to hire someone that can start as soon as possible, and no later than August 1, 2025.

Your Essential Functions & Responsibilities

• Work regularly with customers and other stakeholders to gather ideas, user stories, business requirements and other information needed in support of product development
• Review and aggregate customer feedback and product usage statistics to ensure that strategic decision making is informed by the best qualitative and quantitative data possible
• Work closely with the CTO, Product Designer, and cross-functional teams on a quarterly basis to define high level goals and road maps and associated product strategy
• Conduct regular market and user research in collaboration with the Product Designer to validate ideas for product features and improvements
• Work consistently with the Product Designer to ensure that Designs have been prepared, validated and reviewed by stakeholders ahead of estimation and sprint planning
• Ensure that product and discovery backlogs are clear, prioritized and that work items are increasingly detailed as they approach execution
• Attend all agile and scrum meetings with the Product and Engineering Team to ensure that development work is aligned with organizational goals and optimizing value. Lead associated sprint planning and estimation meetings
• Act as an advocate and proxy for customers and other product users within the Product and Engineering Team
• Communicate the development progress with the CTO, Product Team, and other internal stakeholders on a regular basis
• Develop a deep understanding of the product platform, both current state and future potential

Knowledge, Skills, And Abilities

• 3 - 5 years experience in a Product Owner role supporting the delivery of large-scale projects, and complex B2B and B2C product platforms
• 2 - 3 years experience delivering platforms leveraging product-led growth approaches, revenue generation, and customer engagement
• Detail-oriented and implementation mindset, able to get things done while moving quickly from one task to another and shifting between priorities
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Ability to tailor your communication approach to different audiences (technical and not technical)
• Relationship management - ability to establish and build working relations and partnerships with team members, peers, and project stakeholders
• Understand the principles of lean thinking, design thinking, and user-centered design with experience applying these principles
• Quick learner - ability to pick up new concepts and new skills quickly and effectively, strong ability to get to the root of complexities
• Experience using data to inform decision making
• Experience with Jira or other project management software

Nice to Have

• 3 - 5 years experience in a Business Analysis role supporting business requirements gathering, conceptual solution design, business process process mapping, and change management
• CSPO Certification an asset
• Experience with Figma, Hubspot, Chargebee an asset

Total Rewards

• Generous paid time off, personal days and sick leave
• Extended health, dental, vision and life insurance
• Health Spending Account

Flexible Work Options

This opportunity might accommodate a custom work schedule to suit your unique life circumstances including but not limited to your desire / need to :

• Care for an elderly family member
• Pick up kids early in the afternoon
• Train for the world chess championship, esports competitions, crickets games, meditation retreat, or Paralympics medal
• Invest time volunteering and giving back to the community
• Develop a passion project, prepare for the shark tank pitch, or got talent singing competition

Please bring up your preferred schedule / hours at the first stages of the interview process so the hiring team can share what might align with the requirements of the position, team, and organization.

Work Locations

This position is ideally suited for someone comfortable with remote work. Our ideal candidate is based where we have existing teams : Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal. However, exceptional candidates will be considered anywhere in Canada.

About New / Mode

New / Mode is a purpose-driven enterprise, providing sophisticated civic engagement tools to the world’s most important causes. At New / Mode, you have the opportunity to embrace open-source software and be part of an organization supported and owned by a network of non-profit and social impact investors.

You believe in a new mode of operation based on the following core values, and partner with people and organizations who share them, there might be alignment.

• Empowerment. Empower people to speak in their own voice and take action
• Collaboration. Aim to help build a society that embraces new tools and processes for sharing and cooperation
• Empathy. Celebrate and engage with diversity, uncover othersè needs, and find common ground and shared wins
• Participation. Believe decision-making should be open, transparent, collaborative and focused on those who will be most impacted in their daily lives
• Sustainability. Help create more sustainable, vibrant, and resilient communities
• Fairness. Work towards a fairer economy and society

New / Mode is an equity-seeking organization. People who identify as being from marginalized communities, including women, Indigenous peoples, visible minorities, people with disabilities, people identifying as LGBTQ2, and people from low-income backgrounds are especially encouraged to apply.