Product Owner

SmartStream; Bristol; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Smartstream is seeking an AI-native product thinker to help shape our products at the Bristol development centre. You will work in a hybrid setup with offices in Bristol and London, collaborating with global development teams to embed AI across product lifecycles.

You will lead backlog refinement, write clear user stories, and translate business needs into technical specs, while leveraging AI tools to improve discovery, documentation, and prioritisation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Information Systems, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related discipline.
• Experience as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, or similar role in software development.
• Experience using AI tools to enhance requirements gathering, documentation, or product analysis activities.
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI into day‑to‑day product ownership tasks while maintaining quality and control.
• Experience working in Agile teams with iterative delivery cycles.

Responsibilities

• Define, prioritise, and manage the product backlog to ensure delivery of high‑value features aligned with business objectives and customer needs.
• Work with stakeholders, customers, and internal teams to gather requirements, augmenting discovery with AI‑assisted analysis.
• Translate requirements into clear functional specifications, user stories, acceptance criteria, workflow diagrams, and use cases.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, QA, UX, and architecture teams throughout the product lifecycle.
• Develop a deep understanding of the product, domain, customer workflows, and business rules to inform product decisions.
• Lead Agile ceremonies such as backlog refinement, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and product demos.
• Use AI to support backlog refinement by suggesting story breakdowns, identifying edge cases, and highlighting dependencies.
• Validate product functionality, support testing cycles, and ensure delivered features meet acceptance criteria and quality standards.
• Review and understand incoming support tickets to categorise issues, severity, and business impact.
• Prioritise tickets and assign them effectively to the appropriate engineering or product teams.
• Provide clear timelines, status updates, and progress communication to the support organisation.
• Identify recurring issues and convert them into backlog items, improvements, or product enhancements, leveraging AI to detect trends.

Skills

Backlog management

Agile methodologies

AI-assisted analysis

Stakeholder management

User story writing

Technical translation

AI tool proficiency

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Information Systems, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related discipline

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Copilot Studio

Job description

Location: Bristol/London (Hybrid, 3 days office working)

Smartstream is on its most transformative journey yet, embedding artificial intelligence natively across its products to redefine financial operations for the world’s top banks and asset managers. We are constantly innovating to cement our industry-leading position for the next decade.

Working with our product development centres in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Bristol, we are building AI-powered modern software using constantly evolving agile practices, with AI embedded natively throughout our development workflows. Independent autonomous teams build, maintain, and support services, developing deep expertise in both technology and business domains.

The successful candidate will be an AI-native product thinker who uses AI tools daily to amplify their impact, influence product direction, and grow personally in a friendly and welcoming environment. We welcome engineering and business professionals from a variety of backgrounds to contribute to our diverse teams in our Bristol development centre.

Job Responsibilities

• Define, prioritise, and manage the product backlog to ensure delivery of high‑value features aligned with business objectives and customer needs.
• Work with stakeholders, customers, and internal teams to gather requirements, augmenting discovery with AI-assisted analysis (e.g. summarising workshops, identifying gaps, generating follow-up questions).
• Translate requirements into clear functional specifications, user stories, acceptance criteria, workflow diagrams, and use cases, using AI tools to improve structure, completeness, and speed of delivery.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, QA, UX, and architecture teams throughout the product lifecycle.
• Develop a deep understanding of the product, domain, customer workflows, and business rules to inform product decisions.
• Lead Agile ceremonies such as backlog refinement, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and product demos.
• Use AI to support backlog refinement by suggesting story breakdowns, identifying edge cases, and highlighting dependencies
• Validate product functionality, support testing cycles, and ensure delivered features meet acceptance criteria and quality standards.
• Review and understand incoming support tickets to categorise issues, severity, and business impact.
• Prioritise tickets and assign them effectively to the appropriate engineering or product teams.
• Provide clear timelines, status updates, and progress communication to the support organisation.
• Identify recurring issues and convert them into backlog items, improvements, or product enhancements, leveraging AI to detect trends and prioritisation opportunities.

• Excellent user story writing skills, with clear acceptance criteria and process documentation, leveraging AI tools to improve clarity, coverage, and consistency.
• Strong understanding of Agile principles, especially Scrum or Kanban.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with engineers and product team.
• Strong analytical mindset and ability to make data‑driven decisions.
• Excellent communication, coordination, and stakeholder‑management skills.
• Ability to translate business language into technical details.
• Proficiency with AI tools (such as Claude or Kiro, Copilot Studio) to accelerate user story writing, requirements analysis, and product documentation.
• Ability to critically evaluate AI-generated outputs and apply sound product judgement to shape AI-assisted features and workflows.

Desirable Skills

• Experience working independently with complex, configurable enterprise systems where requirements are non-linear and highly domain specific.
• Hands‑on experience using AI‑assisted tools in a Product Owner or Business Analyst workflow.
• Experience with generative AI tools or AI‑assisted product features.
• Understanding of how AI can be applied in enterprise products.
• Basic understanding of APIs, data models, SQL, or reading technical logs is an advantage.
• Hands‑on experience with tools like Jira and Confluence.
• Experience using intelligence tools for engineering analytics and backlog management is preferred.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Information Systems, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related discipline.

Experience

• Experience as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, or similar role in software development.
• Experience using AI tools to enhance requirements gathering, documentation, or product analysis activities.
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI into day‑to‑day product ownership tasks while maintaining quality and control.
• Experience working in Agile teams with iterative delivery cycles.
• Exposure to enterprise software, SaaS platforms, or complex B2B products is highly beneficial.
• Experience in software vendor environments.

Equality Statement

Smartstream is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity and following practices which are free from unfair and unlawful discrimination.