AI Product Owner

Ascensus is the leading independent technology and service platform powering savings plans across America, providing products and expertise that help nearly 16 million people save for a better today and tomorrow.

Section 1: Position Summary

The Senior AI Product Owner plays a key role in guiding, expanding, and refining AI-powered product capabilities in challenging, high-impact sectors. This position is responsible for defining, planning, and delivering AI products and features, starting from initial discovery and use–case validation right through to backlog management and achieving clear business results. Strong leadership and influence, effective communication with diverse groups, relationship-building, and collaboration with both business and technology teams in a fast-paced setting are essential requirements for this role

Section 2: Job Functions, Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Strategic Planning and Roadmap Definition:

• Represent domain/focus area to leadership, stakeholders, partner teams, and senior leadership

• Engage with stakeholders/end users to identify key business problems and represent the voice of the customer on complex and challenging product initiatives

• Lead shaping and planning efforts, coordinating across teams as needed to optimize the execution strategy

• Participate in data analysis, user research, design sessions, and usability testing

• Define, maintain, and socialize actionable product roadmaps, highlighting key capabilities required to achieve business outcomes

• Partner with capability leaders/product managers to define success metrics and demonstrate impact

Section 3, Requirements:

Experience (required)

• Experience owning and delivering AI‑enabled product capabilities, specifically ChatBot

• A minimum of 5-10 years of agile product development experience

• 5+ working within scrum teams in the Product Owner role with demonstrated success delivering business results

• Financial Services/Retirement Services industry Experience

Personal Qualities

• Strong communicator

• Committed, enthusiastic, & energetic

• Analytical and effective at decision-making

• Decisive and able to operate independently Results-oriented with a commitment to excellence

• Proactive, flexible, and resourceful

Skills/Capabilities

• Expertise in planning and execution of product roadmaps with knowledge of agile methodologies and practices

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to adjust communication for varying audiences including senior leadership

• Highly organized with the ability to effectively prioritize deliverables to achieve business outcomes

• Highly motivated with a desire to lead and influence Ability to work independently, problem solve, and make thoughtful recommendations on the path forward

• Strong leadership skills with the desire to mentor others and provide guidance and support to more junior team members

Professional Development:

• Define goals for professional development and work to continually enhance knowledge of domain, systems, products, and industry

• Partner with Product Development leadership to establish best practices for Product Owners and Business Analysts

• Expand knowledge of agile/scrum, apply best practices, and drive continuous improvement

Leadership and Mentoring:

• Provide mentoring and leadership to develop less experienced Product Owners and other team members partnering with leadership to grow talent within the organization

• Participate in training opportunities and monthly Product Owner Community of Practice (CoP)

• Use and continually develop servant leadership skills to foster inclusiveness, communication, and collaboration

Collaboration and Communication:

• Effectively articulate the product vision and business outcomes to ensure alignment to the “why” within scrum teams and for varying audiences across the firm
• Act as the primary point of contact for updates and feedback related to the domain and supporting scrum team(s)
• Effectively communicate the product narrative, clearly demonstrating your team(s) alignment to and role in achieving the product vision Cultivate the ability to influence, effectively adjusting communication strategies for different audiences

Product Development and Backlog Management:

• Define features and create detailed user stories with actionable acceptance criteria

• Prioritize features in alignment with product vision, goals and strategic objectives, leveraging user data to drive decision-making

• Drive execution within and across scrum teams, providing guidance and direction to develop innovative and scalable solutions that achieve business outcomes

• Maintain an organized product backlog, capturing evolving requirements and adjusting priorities to maximize value delivered

• Actively participate in team-level and program-level agile ceremonies including daily stand-ups, refinement, sprint reviews/demos, release and sprint planning, and retrospectives

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