Product Owner I

Wilmington Trust; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); Hybrid; USD 113,000 - 189,000; Full time

Job summary

Wilmington Trust is seeking a Product Owner I to manage and improve technology supporting critical business processes in Institutional Services. You will define OKRs, build roadmaps, and prioritize features to align with business needs while balancing stability and transformation.

You will collaborate with business, technology, operations, risk, and compliance to deliver reliable, efficient solutions and drive client-focused outcomes across the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 4 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 8 years’ higher education and/or work experience, including a minimum of 4 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience
• Understanding of Design Thinking principles and applying them in digital product design and development
• Strong stakeholder management, communication, and problem-solving skills

Responsibilities

• Define and manage clear OKRs that align with Institutional Services business priorities, measure success, and guide team direction.
• Create and maintain a prioritized feature list that reflects Institutional Services business architecture and evolving user needs.
• Build and maintain current - and future-state business process and workflow models to inform design and enable strategic planning.
• Translate strategic goals into actionable delivery roadmaps, balancing short-term execution with long-term transformation.
• Focus on outcomes over outputs, incorporating design thinking methods and analytics to inform product design.
• Define, own, and deliver the vision and roadmap for one or more major business technology products, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and communicate them clearly to teams and stakeholders.
• Prioritize and groom the backlog in partnership with the team; write clear user stories and specify acceptance criteria using ATDD.
• Develop and regularly update capacity and demand plans to ensure proper resourcing across business and technology.
• Make autonomous decisions quickly and thoughtfully to keep delivery aligned with overall vision and strategy.
• Act as the voice of the client within delivery teams, advocating for issuer, investor, and internal operational team needs.
• Partner with technology and operations teams to provide stakeholders with clear, timely progress updates through dashboards, reporting tools, and other visible communication methods.
• Collaborate across teams and with other Product Owners to align client journeys and dependent backlogs.
• Understand and adhere to the Company’s risk and regulatory standards, policies and controls; identify risk-related issues needing escalation.
• Maintain internal controls and support audits; manage the platform including user onboarding, entitlement management, upgrades, issue resolution, and support coordination.

Skills

OKR definition

Roadmap planning

Backlog management

User stories

ATDD

Stakeholder management

Design thinking

Agile methods

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Dashboards / BI tooling

APIs integration

Job description

Location: Hybrid within footprint, open to remote outside of the M&T footprint

Overview

The Wilmington Trust Institutional Services (IS) division is experiencing rapid business growth and has initiated a strategic digital transformation program. The goals of the program are to grow revenue through new and transformed digital-first trust and agency service products, to move from a product-centric to client-centric operating model, to move from market-specific to global solutions, and to dramatically lower the cost to serve.

In alignment with the business strategy, we are seeking an entrepreneurial and highly analytical Product Owner I to manage and improve technology supporting critical business processes across Institutional Services. Reporting to the Senior Product Owner for Workflow Solutions, you will help shape the product roadmap while prioritizing platform stability, ongoing maintenance, production needs, risk reduction, and targeted enhancements. You will collaborate across business, technology, operations, risk, and compliance to ensure these solutions remain reliable, efficient, and aligned with business needs.

Primary Responsibilities

Product Vision, Strategy, and Roadmap

• Define and manage clear OKRs that align with Institutional Services business priorities, measure success, and guide team direction.
• Create and maintain a prioritized feature list that reflects Institutional Services business architecture and evolving user needs.
• Build and maintain current - and future-state business process and workflow models to inform design and enable strategic planning.
• Translate strategic goals into actionable delivery roadmaps, balancing short-term execution with long-term transformation.
• Focus on outcomes over outputs, incorporating design thinking methods and analytics to inform product design. Due to the scope of these product(s), these efforts are often more complex.

Backlog Ownership and Delivery

• Define, own, and deliver the vision and roadmap for one or more major business technology products, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and communicate them clearly to teams and stakeholders.
• Prioritize and groom the backlog in partnership with the team; write clear user stories and specify acceptance criteria using Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD).
• Develop and regularly update capacity and demand plans to ensure proper resourcing across business and technology.
• Make autonomous decisions quickly and thoughtfully to keep delivery aligned with overall vision and strategy.

Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration

• Act as the voice of the client within delivery teams, advocating for issuer, investor, and internal operational team needs.
• Partner with technology and operations teams to provide stakeholders with clear, timely progress updates through dashboards, reporting tools, and other visible communication methods.
• Collaborate across teams and with other Product Owners to align client journeys and dependent backlogs.

Risk, Compliance, Vendor Oversight

• Understand and adhere to the Company’s risk and regulatory standards, policies and controls in accordance with the Company’s Risk Appetite. Identify risk-related issues needing escalation to management.
• Maintain M&T internal control standards, including timely implementation of internal and external audit points together with any issues raised by external regulators as applicable
• Manages, and when required, administers the platform for Institutional Services including user onboarding, entitlement management, upgrades, issue resolution, and support coordination.

Managerial/Supervisory Responsibilities

No direct management responsibility, but as an individual contributor, the jobholder must manage activities using a matrixed influencing approach. Works with essential business partners throughout the organization, often at a more senior level and irrespective of hierarchy or divisions, advocating for the benefit of the Customer.

Education And Experience Required

Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 4 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 8 years’ higher education and/or work experience, including a minimum of 4 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience

Understanding of Design Thinking principles and applying them in the day to day of digital product design and development best practices.

Strong stakeholder management, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Education And Experience Preferred

• Exposure to fintech platforms and emerging technologies with a strong understanding of what’s possible in a modern digital ecosystem.
• Demonstrated ability to stitch together vendor platform, APIs, and internal systems to design transformative, end-to-end experiences.
• Agile or product certifications (CSPO, SAFe POPM, or similar)

M&T Bank is committed to fair, competitive, and market-informed pay for our employees. The pay range for this position is $113,300.00 - $188,800.00 Annual (USD). The successful candidate’s particular combination of knowledge, skills, and experience will inform their specific compensation.

Location

Wilmington, Delaware, United States of America