Technical Product Owner

Stifel Financial Corp.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Stifel is seeking a Technical Product Owner who owns the backlog for shared platform capabilities, including CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, and developer self-service tooling. You will represent the voice of platform consumers and work with Cloud Platform Engineering, product teams, security, and architecture to deliver secure, reliable, and scalable capabilities.

You’ll operate two to four sprints ahead to ensure predictable, high-quality delivery of the paved-road platform and translate platform

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years in product ownership or related roles.
• Experience in Agile, Scrum, or SAFe environments.
• Experience supporting DevOps or cloud engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Own, refine, and prioritize the platform backlog.
• Translate platform capabilities into actionable technical user stories and enablers.
• Ensure backlog items are sprint-ready and production-ready.
• Collaborate with Product Managers to align outcomes and roadmap.
• Support platform demos and release communications.

Skills

Analytical skills

Prioritization

Communication skills

User stories

Cloud infrastructure

CI/CD

DevOps collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

Terraform

AWS

Job description

Why Stifel

Stifel strives for a culture that puts its clients and associates first: a culture where everyone belongs, everyone is welcome, and everyone contributes to the success of our clients, their careers, and the firm as a whole.

Let's talk about how you can find your place here at Stifel,where success meets success.

What You'll Be Doing

The Technical Product Owner owns the backlog for shared platform capabilities, such as CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, and developer self-service tooling. This role represents the voice of platform consumers, including application teams and downstream platform teams, and ensures the platform delivers secure, reliable, and scalable capabilities aligned with enterprise standards. The Technical Product Owner partners closely with Cloud Platform Engineering, product teams, security, and architecture to define and prioritize platform capabilities. The role operates two to four sprints ahead to ensure predictable, high-quality delivery of the paved-road platform.

What We're Looking For

• Own, refine, and prioritize the platform backlog, balancing developer experience, security, reliability, and scalability.
• Translate platform capabilities and guardrails into clear, well-defined technical user stories and enablers.
• Ensure backlog items are right-sized, technically feasible, and sprint-ready while maintaining one to two sprints of production-ready stories for Iteration Planning.
• Partner with Product Managers to define platform outcomes, success metrics, and roadmap alignment.
• Evaluate technical feasibility and challenge implementation approaches where the tradeoffs warrant it.
• Gather feedback from developers and engineers through office hours, onboarding sessions, and direct engagement.
• Clearly communicate platform standards, guardrails, and roadmap direction.
• Collaborate with Security, Architecture, and Compliance to ensure platform requirements are understood and adopted.
• Validate completed platform work against defined acceptance criteria, architectural intent, and security standards.
• Support platform demos, release communications, and enablement efforts for consuming teams.
• Provide day-to-day clarification to engineering teams during implementation of platform features and guardrails.
• Support the long-term platform roadmap, including evolution of CI/CD standards, infrastructure-as-code patterns, and self-service tooling.
• Identify opportunities to incorporate successful downstream platform extensions into company-wide patterns.

What You'll Bring

• Strong analytical and prioritization skills in technically complex domains.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, particularly with engineering audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to translate platform and infrastructure needs into actionable technical user stories.
• Sufficient depth in cloud-native infrastructure and CI/CD concepts to evaluate feasibility and scope stories accurately.
• Comfort working across engineering, security, and architecture teams.

Education & Experience

• Minimum Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum Required: 5+ years of combined experience in product ownership, product management, business analysis, or software engineering.
• Preferred: Experience in financial services or another regulated industry.
• Preferred: Experience working in Agile, Scrum, or SAFe environments and experience supporting infrastructure, DevOps, or cloud engineering teams. Experience gathering developer feedback and converting insights into platform improvements.

Licenses & Credentials

• Preferred: SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM) or Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO).
• Preferred: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner or AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate, or willingness to obtain within 12 months.

Systems & Technology

• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), and cloud platforms (AWS preferred).
• Prior exposure to platform governance, guardrails, or shared service models, preferred.

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About Stifel

Stifel is more than 130 years old and still thinking like a start-up. We are a global wealth management and investment banking firm serious about innovation and fresh ideas. Built on a simple premise of safeguarding our clients’ money as if it were our own, coined by our namesake, Herman Stifel, our success is intimately tied to our commitment to helping families, companies, and municipalities find their own success.

While our headquarters is in St. Louis, we have offices in New York, San Francisco, Baltimore, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, and more than 400 other locations. Stifel is home to approximately 9,000 individuals who are currently building their careers as financial advisors, research analysts, project managers, marketing specialists, developers, bankers, operations associates, among hundreds more. Let's talk about how you can find your place here at Stifel, where success meets success.

At Stifel we offer an entrepreneurial environment, comprehensive benefits package to include health, dental and vision care, 401k, wellness initiatives, life insurance, and paid time off.

Stifel is an Equal Opportunity Employer.