Product Owner (Hybrid - Columbia, SC)
The Product Owner translates established product vision and roadmap priorities into clear, actionable requirements and delivery-ready work for assigned products, services, or business capabilities. This role facilitates requirements development, maintains backlog readiness, supports cross-functional delivery, and ensures alignment among business needs, customer expectations, technical considerations, testing, and product-governance requirements. The Product Development Owner monitors delivery progress, supports release readiness, and promotes quality and continuous improvement throughout the product-development lifecycle.
What You'll Do
Product Roadmap Execution and Backlog Readiness
- Translate established product vision, roadmap priorities, and business objectives into clear product features, requirements, user stories, and delivery outcomes.
- Partner with Product Managers, Product Owners, stakeholders, and subject-matter experts to clarify priorities, scope, expected value, and customer needs for assigned products or services.
- Maintain backlog readiness by refining and prioritizing work, defining acceptance criteria, identifying dependencies, and confirming that items are appropriately understood and prepared for delivery.
- Work with delivery teams and technical stakeholders to evaluate feasibility, capacity, dependencies, risks, and constraints and recommend adjustments to delivery plans.
- Maintain alignment among roadmap priorities, backlog commitments, delivery timelines, and evolving business or customer needs.
Requirements and Cross-Functional Solution Alignment
- Lead requirements discussions with stakeholders, subject-matter experts, Product Owners, and delivery teams to gather, analyze, clarify, and document detailed business and product needs.
- Develop and maintain functional and non-functional requirements, user stories, use cases, process flows, acceptance criteria, and other documentation needed to support delivery.
- Facilitate communication among business, technology, user-experience, testing, and other stakeholders to promote shared understanding of requirements, priorities, and expected outcomes.
- Partner with technical and user-experience stakeholders to confirm that proposed solutions are feasible, usable, aligned with business objectives, and responsive to customer needs.
- Coordinate with testing partners to validate acceptance criteria and test coverage and confirm that delivered functionality aligns with documented requirements and business intent.
Product Delivery, Governance, and Continuous Improvement
- Participate in product planning, backlog refinement, delivery reviews, and other team activities to clarify requirements, address questions, and maintain alignment throughout delivery.
- Monitor delivery progress, dependencies, risks, delivery measures, and quality trends to identify issues and recommend improvements to planning and execution.
- Maintain traceability among business needs, requirements, development work, acceptance criteria, testing, decisions, and delivered functionality throughout the product-development lifecycle.
- Support release readiness by coordinating requirements, testing, documentation, stakeholder communication, implementation activities, and other applicable readiness expectations.
- Ensure product artifacts and delivery practices align with applicable documentation, governance, risk, control, and quality standards and use feedback and delivery results to support continuous improvement.
What You'll Need
- Bachelor's degree in business administration, information technology, information systems, finance, or a related field.
- 1-3 years of experience in product development, product ownership, business analysis, requirements development, technology delivery, or a related discipline.
- Certified Product Owner
- Product-development, product-ownership, requirements-development, backlog-management, and iterative-delivery practices.
- Ability to translate business and customer needs into clear requirements, user stories, process documentation, acceptance criteria, and delivery-ready work.
- Analytical thinking, problem-solving, attention to detail, and ability to identify dependencies, risks, gaps, and improvement opportunities.
- Stakeholder communication, facilitation, collaboration, and ability to bridge business and technical perspectives across partner teams.
- Knowledge of testing and validation, requirements traceability, release readiness, product governance, delivery measures, and continuous-improvement practices.
- Foundational knowledge of data analysis and query concepts.
AgFirst Farm Credit Bank provides financing, as well as technology and other value-added services, to association partners so they can lend to rural residents and agricultural operations of all sizes. We take pride in investing in our employees, our partners and our community.
Find out more on AgFirst.com, and follow us on LinkedIn!
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in business administration, information technology, information systems, finance, or a related field
- 1-3 years of experience in product development, product ownership, business analysis, requirements development, technology delivery, or a related discipline
- Certified Product Owner
- Knowledge of product-development, product-ownership, requirements-development, backlog-management, and iterative-delivery practices
- Ability to translate business and customer needs into requirements, user stories, process documentation, acceptance criteria, and delivery-ready work
- Analytical thinking, problem-solving, attention to detail, and ability to identify dependencies, risks, gaps, and improvement opportunities
- Stakeholder communication, facilitation, collaboration, and ability to bridge business and technical perspectives
- Knowledge of testing and validation, requirements traceability, release readiness, product governance, delivery measures, and continuous-improvement practices
- Foundational knowledge of data analysis and query concepts
What We Do
As part of the nationwide Farm Credit system, AgFirst Farm Credit Bank has been lending financial and business support to agriculture and rural America for more than a century. As a $40.4 billion company, we are prepared to meet tomorrow with a progressive mindset and a passionate workforce by continually adapting to changes in the technology and business landscape. AgFirst provides wholesale funding, cutting-edge technology and a range of support services to local agricultural and rural lenders in 15 states and Puerto Rico. These lenders provide loans to rural home and land buyers and to agricultural operations of all sizes. Our cooperative business model ensures we share our partners’ values, goals and vision for the future. Our employees come from a wide range of backgrounds to advance our mission of serving agriculture and rural America – to Impact More every day. We place a premium on our employees’ unique skills and perspectives and invest in them by offering excellent benefits, competitive pay, flexible work schedules, leadership development opportunities, a corporate incentive plan and more.
