Product Owner

Equal Experts; South Africa; Remote; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Part time

Job summary

Equal Experts is seeking a Senior Technical Product Owner to join its network of consultants. You will define and communicate strategic priorities, analyse client context, and identify impactful opportunities to mature product management across projects.

In a cross-functional setting with Engagement Managers and Engineers, you’ll help teams apply modern agile practices, drive continuous improvement, and deliver pragmatic solutions for client outcomes. This is a contract / freelance opportunity.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in product and digital roles.
• Solid understanding of data concepts and how they inform decisions.
• Experience applying Lean and/or Agile methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with clients to co-create the Product vision and roadmap.
• Define priorities based on commercial, financial, technical and user evidence.
• Socialise the Product vision and gather feedback across teams.
• Build strong client relationships at multiple levels.
• Balance problem understanding with stakeholder priorities to focus on outcomes.
• Leverage data from primary and secondary research to inform decisions.
• Communicate key information clearly between stakeholders and delivery teams.
• Make pragmatic decisions to maximise business value and investment.

Skills

Product management

Digital roles

Agile methodologies

Data concepts

Job description

Equal Experts is an innovative consultancy specialising in the delivery of custom software solutions for
blue-chip enterprise and public sector clients across a range of industry sectors. We work on important
projects for our clients, deliver market-leading propositions across the digital, online and mobile
channels, and are recognised for our leadership in the application of agile and lean delivery methods to
assure delivery. We have offices in Australia, India, South Africa, the UK, the EU and the USA.

We are looking for Senior Technical Product Owners to join our network. We want consultants who are able to
use their experience to define and communicate strategic priorities, analyse the client’s business
context broadly and holistically, including market trends and competitor analysis, to identify potentially
impactful new opportunities, and engage not only in optimising a particular product or feature but also in
maturing the product management process as a whole.

Typically, you will work as part of a cross-functional team, including Engagement Managers, Delivery
Leads, and Engineers, as well as members of the client organisation.
This role involves working in teams that use modern agile technical practices - including continuous
integration and deployment and fast feedback loops - to deliver timely and pragmatic solutions, as well
as helping others to do their jobs in a more effective way.

Responsibilities

• Work with the client to co-create the Product vision
• Define Product priorities based on commercial (potential return), financial (potential cost), technical (potential risks), organisational strategy, and user-based sources of evidence
• Lead on socialising the Product vision and subsequent roadmap to actively gather feedback from other teams and areas
• Build and manage strong relationships at all levels of the client’s organisation
• Balance understanding of the problem space with empathy for internal stakeholders’ priorities, to ensure a defensible focus on the outcomes that matter most
• Engage with a broad spectrum of data (primary and secondary research) to better understand market and customer trends
• Concisely and effectively gather and communicate the most relevant information from senior stakeholders to the delivery team, and vice versa
• Make highly pragmatic decisions in pursuit of delivering outcomes that solve significant problems to the commercial advantage of the organisation. This includes diplomatically saying ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ to senior leaders, and/or stopping ideas if the value is unequal to the required effort and investment

Required Skills

• Extensive, diversified experience working in Product and digital roles
• Detailed understanding of the impact that enablers will deliver and value of these across multiple teams.
• Clear and concise communication across multiple teams and Senior Stakeholders
• This requires some level of data experience / technical understanding of the concepts of data engineering.
• Experience of Lean and/or Agile methodologies
• Able to manage upwards
• A good, active listener and concise and clear communicator
• Able to manage and motivate teams

This is a contract / freelance position, it is not for a permanent position at Equal Experts.

Voluntary Self-Identification

As set forth in Equal Experts’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.