Product Owner

Partnered with Aquent, a leading organization is seeking visionary talent to shape the future of customer engagement through groundbreaking technological innovation. You will be at the heart of transforming customer operations, leveraging the power of AI to deliver unparalleled service and efficiency. In this critical role, you will act as the central catalyst, translating complex business challenges into innovative AI-driven solutions that directly impact how customers interact with our services. Your leadership will not only modernize systems but also redefine operational excellence, making a tangible difference in daily customer interactions and overall business performance.

We are seeking a high-performing Product Owner / Product Manager to drive feature development, system modernization, and operational execution for a significant Customer Operations AI Initiative. This role serves as the central bridge between business stakeholders-including operations leaders and customer service subject matter experts-and technical build teams. You will own the use-case backlog end-to-end, translating operational business problems into development-ready epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria, while meticulously managing sprint delivery. As this initiative scales, you will play a pivotal role in shaping program improvements, organizational change management, and establishing robust Responsible AI guardrails. We are looking for a disciplined, hands-on Agile Product Owner with a proven track record of leading large-scale enterprise transformation initiatives. While prior Generative AI experience is highly preferred, candidates with exceptional Product Owner/Product Manager fundamentals who demonstrate curiosity and an ability to rapidly adapt to emerging technologies will be given strong consideration.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end use-case backlog, strategically prioritizing features based on business value, technical feasibility, and operational risk.
• Translate intricate operational challenges into clear problem statements, epics, user stories, and precise acceptance criteria, enabling immediate execution by engineering teams.
• Serve as the primary liaison, fostering alignment and driving consensus among diverse stakeholders including business subject matter experts, operations leaders, IT engineering, Legal, Privacy, and Cybersecurity partners.
• Lead and facilitate all core Agile ceremonies, including daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint planning, retrospectives, and stakeholder reviews/demos.
• Maintain meticulous daily task status, ensure backlog transparency, and track velocity metrics using platforms like Azure DevOps or Jira.
• Define crucial operational autonomy boundaries, establish evaluation criteria for successful deployment, implement data-masking guardrails, and navigate internal governance processes for secure and ethical AI development.
• Champion end-user training, develop adoption playbooks, and establish continuous feedback loops to ensure solutions achieve measurable operational outcomes, such as improved call deflection, reduced handle times, and increased accuracy.

Required Qualifications

• Experience: 5-10+ years of dedicated Product Owner, Product Manager, or Project Manager experience driving enterprise software delivery.
• Agile Execution: Proven expertise writing user stories, defining acceptance criteria, managing backlogs, and leading sprint teams.
• Tool Proficiency: Hands-on experience with Agile tracking platforms such as Azure DevOps, Jira, and Confluence.
• Enterprise Transformation: Demonstrated experience leading large-scale technology modernizations, major system implementations, or multi-department process overhauls.
• Education: Bachelor's Degree required.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications & Certifications

• Active Certifications: Highly preferred active credentials including:
  
  
  
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    SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework - POPM, Agilist, RTE)

  • Agile / Scrum Certifications (CSPO, CSM, PSM, PMI-ACP)
  • Project Management (PMP)
  
  
  
  
• Emerging Tech & AI Background: Prior experience with Generative AI, LLMs, conversational AI, or intelligent automation; experience setting evaluation criteria for probabilistic outputs or building RAG/agentic workflows.
• Governance & Vendor Experience: Exposure to Responsible AI frameworks, vendor management, SOW evaluation, or managing employees/contractors.