Data Product Lead - Build Trusted, Reusable Data

NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi; Auckland; On-site; NZD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working arrangements

Professional development

Five weeks annual leave

Income protection

Job summary

NZ Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi (NZTA) seeks a Data Product Owner to lead the data product journey, moving from project-led delivery to a data product-centric agency. You will define ownership, roadmaps and deliver trusted, reusable data products, partnering with business groups and CTO teams.

You will own vision, value and lifecycle of data products, embedding governance, security and stewardship while driving adoption and continuous improvement across the organisation.

Qualifications

• Experience establishing or evolving products in a complex organisation.
• Ability to uncover business and user needs, identify practical starting points and balance immediate requirements with long-term reuse.
• Track record of turning ideas into roadmaps, prioritised backlogs and working products, managing dependencies and demonstrating early value.
• Practical understanding of data governance, quality, privacy, security and stewardship across the product lifecycle.
• Strong relationship-building and influencing skills, able to gain commitment to new ways of working.
• Experience bringing users on a change journey, addressing adoption barriers and guiding training to embed products.
• Pragmatic, outcome-focused approach: start small, measure value and usage, iterate.

Responsibilities

• Identify and prioritise initial data product opportunities with business groups, defining clear user needs, ownership, outcomes and roadmaps.
• Establish and own product backlogs, balancing immediate project needs with reusable enterprise value and trade-offs across risk, cost and dependencies.
• Work with delivery teams to take data products from discovery through to release, demonstrating value and establishing repeatable practices.
• Partner with governance, architecture and platform teams to embed quality, security, privacy and stewardship into data products from the outset.
• Build understanding of data products across NZTA, helping stakeholders adopt product-centric ways of working and discover, trust and reuse products.
• Measure early value and adoption, use feedback to improve assigned products, and strengthen lifecycle management as the approach grows.

Skills

Product management

Stakeholder engagement

Roadmapping

Governance

Job description

NZ Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi (NZTA) seeks a Data Product Owner to lead the data product journey, moving from project-led delivery to a data product-centric agency. You will define ownership, roadmaps and deliver trusted, reusable data products, partnering with business groups and CTO teams.

You will own vision, value and lifecycle of data products, embedding governance, security and stewardship while driving adoption and continuous improvement across the organisation.