What You'll Do
The Product Owner is responsible for identifying and managing product requirements, prioritizing the engineering team’s work on features and bugs, and supporting feature launch and rollout processes. He/she holds the vision that will be executed by the agile team. The Product Owner is also responsible for understanding and developing fleshed out features with product management, working with the engineering team during grooming sessions to translate those features into user stories, and validating the feature before release.
- Serve as a primary point of contact for one or more of our Agile development teams.
- Be the team’s primary customer advocate and link to the business and technology strategy.
- Create, maintain, prioritise, and sequence the team backlog according to business value and existing commitments.
- Manage stakeholder conversations to ensure appropriate prioritisation of work across workstreams to meet business objectives.
- Provide clarity to all stakeholders on prioritisation and provide feedback on progress.
- Maintain a healthy backlog of work, aligned with customer and stakeholder needs to maximise the value delivered by the engineering teams.
- Work with the Product and User Experience teams to provide detailed guidance during the product development process in an Agile environment.
- Collaborate with internal stakeholders and customers to gather requirements and understand user needs, translating them into clear product specifications and features.
- Design, develop and manage activities for a specific product or group of products from product definition and planning through to production, release, and end of life.
- Remain involved throughout all stages of a product’s lifecycle including modifications, upgrades and maintenance of the product or product line.
- Assist with the elaboration of Epics, and Features into user stories that are granular enough to be achieved in a single sprint.
- Write the specifications in Jira stories with sufficient detail and clarity to document the user journey so the engineering team can write the software for our revenue generating products.
- Work closely with engineering teams to plan the development of end-to-end tax compliance products, ensuring timely delivery and adherence to quality standards.
- Serve as the central resource with design, process, test, quality, and marketing as the product(s) move to production and distribution.
- Assist engineering scrum teams during regular ceremonies: feature review, grooming, sprint planning and demos by being the voice of the customer and communicating the value behind each product and prioritization decision.
- Translate business needs into product requirements within the agile SDLC framework (i.e., Epics with detailed descriptions and acceptance criteria)
- Define and own product non-functional requirements such as QA standards, performance goals, service level agreements, and continuous monitoring/support processes.
- Liaise with other Product Owners to establish and improve consistent best practice.
- Create and execute customer usability studies and end-user feedback surveys that identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks of supported products.
What You'll Need to be Successful
Job Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree or higher in computer, science, or engineering.
- Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across cross-functional teams and influence stakeholders at all levels.
- Experience working closely with Engineering and experience with Agile development teams.
- 8+ years’ experience in product management, product owner, or as a software developer/engineer and working in agile methodologies.
- Strong technical background and understanding of SQL, data integration methodologies, and related technologies will be a plus.
- Strong time management skills
- Ability to manage complex calendar and meeting workloads.
- Prioritization of urgent requests and strategic tasks
- Ability to collaborate with multiple teams and leaders to gain alignment and agreement on complex problems towards a unified goal.
- Skilled at understanding and documenting complicated processes with multiple processes, technologies, and end-user personas.
- Flexible schedule that can accommodate a geographically diverse team across multiple time zones and cultural backgrounds.
- Presentation to leadership showcasing product progress and highlighting issues if any.
- Be empathetic about the users.
- 10-15% travel (Need basis)
Preferred Experience
- Business systems analyst experience.
- Subject matter experience: indirect tax (VAT, GST, sales/use tax, etc.), tax regulations, software languages, and product marketing will be a big plus.
- Inquisitive, Curious & user-centric - always trying to learn more about our market, our users, our capabilities, and where there are opportunities for us.
Required Skills
- Jira, or a similar agile project management software
- Confluence and Microsoft Office tools
- Miro, Figma, or similar UX software tools
- Experience with self-serve B2B SaaS products is a plus.
About Avalara
We’re Avalara. We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.
We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing nearly 40 billion customer API calls and over 5 million tax returns a year.
Last year, we became a billion-dollar business
, and our tribe expanded by a cool thousand people - there’s nearly 5,000 of us now. Our growth is real, and we’re not slowing down - not until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.
We’re bright, innovative and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. Ownership and achievement go hand in hand here. We instill passion in our people through the trust we place in them.
We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.
EEO Statement
We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer. Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.
