Agile Product Owner (Remote - CST Hours/Hybrid, Chicago, IL)

Our customer is a large United States insurance company that is backed by more than 100 years of experience and provides insurance products and services for businesses and professionals in the United States., Canada and Europe. Headquartered in Chicago, IL, they have more than 20 US locations.

We are seeking a contract Agile Product Owner to support our Customer's business needs. This role is 100% remote in CST hours, but candidates local to Chicago are preferred for hybrid work (2 days in-office).

This individual will serve as the customer proxy to the Agile team within the agile process and is the final authority for decisions regarding priority, business value, and functionality for all the work done by the Agile development team. The Product Owner possesses an in-depth knowledge of goals and desired objectives of the work. They will own, define, and prioritize the team backlog, establish story acceptance criteria, drive content via prioritized user stories, obtain customer validation and accept stories, ensuring that the solution effectively addresses overall program priorities. The Product Owner may be working on a Scaled Agile Release Train as part of the Product Management team, or they may work on an independent Agile team and have Feature as well as story ownership. The Product owner will be a part of multiple Product Owners working with Product Managers on a Large Policy Administration Project.

Responsibilities:

• Supports one to two Agile Scrum teams on initiatives of medium to large complexity
• Owns, defines, analyzes and prioritizes the team backlog, establishes story acceptance criteria, drives content via prioritized user stories, obtains customer validation and accept stories, ensuring that the solution effectively addresses overall program priorities.
• Attends Scrum ceremonies (such as daily standups, sprint review meetings, retrospective meetings, cross-team coordination, and etc.), alongside the Scrum Master, ensuring that Scrum Teams adhere to the Scrum values of courage, focus, commitment, respect and openness in delivering high quality solutions. Fosters an environment of continuous improvement / learning.
• Facilitates Product Backlog Refinement including reviewing and updating backlog item definition and developing acceptance criteria and value statements, providing information to the team so they can establish technical feasibility and scope estimates, analyzing ways to split backlog items into smaller chunks of incremental value, helping to inform the enablers required to support new features and capabilities, and establishing their capacity allocation.
• Builds customer and user insights into all stages of the Scrum planning and execution process, ensuring the continuous validation of Stories with Customers and business users.
• Proactively reviews metrics, and stakeholder feedback for continuous improvement opportunities.
• Will collaborate with Product Managers, Senior Product Owners and other Product Owners, to ensure Stories align to value, goals and objectives of long-term business vision.

Skills and Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience
• Typically a minimum of two years as a Business Analyst, Project Manager or related role
• Guidewire Policy Admin Experience Required
• General Liability Experience Required
• Experience with Insurance
• Successful track record with Agile methodologies
• High learning agility, early adopter with developing level of impact / emerging strong track record
• Ability to build relationships with the team and stakeholders
• Willing to develop conflict resolutions skills
• Ability to enact change quickly
• Stand as an example to Agile team members by inspiring, encouraging and providing constructive feedback
• Good leadership skill
• Ability to work directly with Product Management, business stakeholders and technical/product teams
• Ability to travel for planning (Company will shoulder the expenses)

We offer a competitive salary range for this position. Most candidates who join our team are hired at the median of this range, ensuring fair and equitable compensation based on experience and qualifications.

Contractor benefits are available through our 3rd Party Employer of Record (Available upon completion of waiting period for eligible engagements)

Benefits include: Medical, Dental, Vision, 401k.

An Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.