Senior Product Owner

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our exciting team of employees. Royal Caribbean Group is pleased to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Senior Product Owner is responsible for working with senior management to set strategy, vision and roadmap for more than two products assuring alignment with business goals and objectives.  You are responsible for creating and maintaining multiple product backlogs, prioritizing, driving completion of MVPs, and evaluating the delivery by the agile teams to ensure impeccable features and functionality.  You are the owner for multiple products and/or projects from inception through to delivery in close collaboration with various roles from Delivery, Product, Engineering, Architecture, Infrastructure and Security.  The role is accountable for creation of all product owner deliverables to assure accuracy, alignment with best practices/principles and company technology vision. The Senior Product Owner is viewed by others as an extensively experienced subject matter expert across multiple product fields, and a role model of corporate culture.  The role requires strong interpersonal and teamwork skills.  The Senior Product Owner reports to a product director or product manager.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

•  Work with all other product managers to ensure accuracy and alignment of customer expectations, requirements, and business values for platform features.
• Own more than two product backlogs from inception through delivery to production and responsible for the alignment of business requirements with each product technology roadmap.         
• Drive & oversee development of a feature-based roadmap, objectives and milestones with involvement from all relevant stakeholders (internal and external) to ensure technical feasibility and alignment with the product technology roadmap.
• Ensure coordination of communications between the scrum teams and stakeholders. Accountable for organization of milestone demonstrations with stakeholders.
• Evaluate the quality and alignment to objectives of epics and user stories with acceptance criteria for the scrum team backlog.
• Evaluate the quality and alignment to requirements of written user stories with sufficient details for the scrum team to size the effort.
• Lead overseeing the quality aspect for definition of the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) based on business and strategic measures.
• Lead the management of scope, grooming and prioritization for more than two team backlogs on a regular basis.
• Provide guidance to the scrum teams during sprint planning.  Verify accurate documentation and communication of product/application decisions and strategies.
• Lead the review and accept or reject user story completion based on acceptance criteria of multiple backlogs.
• Lead the management to identify, address, track and manage risks, and escalate of multiple products when necessary, in collaboration with the Delivery Lead. Work with program and engineering managers to communicate project statuses and risks.
• Lead the identification and management of cross team dependencies to prevent impediments and foster collaboration across multiple products.
• Leverage JIRA, Confluence, and other tools to provide metrics and reports for sprint and project management.
• Manage, coach and mentor other product owners and product analysts and promote a culture of innovation.
• Remain current with business industry and operational trends in order to advise and advocate solution approaches for systems and applications to meet growing business needs.
• Perform other duties as required.  This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee occupying this position.  Employees will be required to perform any other job-related duties assigned by their supervisor or management.

FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Responsible for all resources, including financial implications and cost of systems/services across multiple products and technology solutions, during development. This includes making decisions based on the best return on investment (ROI) and understanding the cost and benefit when prioritizing the backlog.
• Solid understanding of accounting rules for product capital and expense activities.

• Define optimization opportunities to manage cost and ensure technology expenditures align with business objectives.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Requires a Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Technology or any related discipline.
• 10+ years of work experience as a Product Owner in Software Engineering / Information Technology or related area.
• Preferred experience leading large, cross-functional teams in a globally diverse model.

COMPETENCIES:

Customer Empathy

• Provides guest focused vision, strategy and leadership that exceeds guest expectations.
• Persuasively articulates the link between guest focus and enhanced business success to stakeholders.
• Consults with senior executives regarding critical success factors and details to being a guest focused organization.
• Teaches others to foster guest relationships based on mutual understanding, respect, trust and 'business partnering'.
• Champions, models and directs RCCL's commitment to externally focused decision-making tied to guest business needs and satisfaction.
• Develops 'best practices' to create, evaluate and enhance guest loyalty that are sought by others within and outside the organization.

Product Health

• Contributes to the establishment of best practices for implementing product health processes and procedures.
• Leads discussions on complex issues with other industry experts or competitors.
• Designs, implements and continuously improves testing and engineering processes.
• Creates organizational product health policies, strategies and methodologies.
• Publishes internal documentation on improving the effectiveness of decision trees, merging reliability and costs.
• Champions to the business the use of advanced and emerging technologies and methodologies. Accountable for assessing the latest technology and roadmap when dealing with vendors.

Software Product Management

• Champions the product with customers, industry and stakeholders.
• Defines and communicates benchmarks for product success; monitors revenue goals.
• Drives new product development; leads product visioning and planning activities.

• Explains alternative pricing models and their relative strengths and weaknesses.
• Is considered an expert in bringing new products to a global product marketplace.
• Defines and communicates product strategies, directions, and roadmaps.

Software Product Business Knowledge

• Defines and communicates product strategy, vision and functional roadmap.
• Leads functional product planning effort; summarizes and communicates planned functionality.
• Drives functional enhancements and anticipates new opportunities and needs.
• Ensures feedback from current and potential users, analysts and users of competitive products.
• Plays a key role in analyzing and dealing with unusual and complex customization needs.
• Is recognized as an expert on product functions, features and implementation issues.

Software Product Installation and Support 

• Creates and establishes software installation and support policies, practices and standards.
• Influences company-wide software installation and support methodologies and practices.
• Demonstrates in-depth experience with installation and support for the full range of products.
• Analyzes, troubleshoots, and reports on product performance and quality deficiencies.
• Monitors current and evolving software installation and support trends and practices.
• Addresses support requirements for different types of infrastructures and environments.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS:

• Expert knowledge and experience engaging and empathesizing with the customer, putting their wants and needs at the heart of all products; ability to leverage information to create customized guest solutions.
• Expert knowledge and experience utilizing various tools and techniques for ensuring product health, reliability, availability and maintainability.
• Expert knowledge and experience with methodologies, tools, and techniques for managing software products at all stages of the product lifecycle.
• Expert knowledge and experience with the business aspects and operation of a software product; knowledge of the install base, current uses, future plans, and product vision.
• Expert knowledge and experience in helping customers install, integrate, and operationalize software products or systems.
• Expert knowledge and experience in the Travel / Hospitality industry.
• Expert knowledge and experience with software development lifecycle methods (e.g., agile)
• Solid technology background in software development & various platforms with proven experience leading technical professionals.
• Expert ability to lead and collaborate with persons at all levels of responsibility in the Information Technology and Corporate organizations to formulate, communicate and implement enterprise technical strategies.
• Possesses an expert understanding of IT estimation activities.
• Demonstrates expert knowledge and ability to lead the analysis and problem solving of engineering problems with many individuals which results in consensus on solutions.
• Knowledgeable. You have progressive experience in (specify the product functional requirements).
• Effective Communicator. Your writing and speaking skills are clear, articulate, and effective, demonstrating your ability to interact with and be understood by all levels and various teams across the organization.
• Problem Solver. You are a creative thinker, with a solid understanding of agile practices, patterns and techniques and other software development methodologies.
• Systemic Perspective.  You have knowledge of the interconnected set of elements for your product ecosystem, and you create innovation that achieves the desired goal or overall objectives of the whole.
• Collaborator and Business Liaison. You are united with teammates and follow through on commitments, so you are known as a trusted business partner and someone your teammates can count on.
• Organized, Efficient, and Accountable. You have a keen eye for detail and pride yourself on delivering quality work. You multitask well, re-prioritize accordingly, and meet deadlines consistently. Above all, you are flexible and able to juggle the needs of changing priorities of the business, including managing multiple projects at once.
• Passionate. Motivated. Eager to Learn. You are resourceful, ask smart questions, challenge the status quo, and regularly seek to understand.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS:

While performing job functions the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, write, review and type reports, compile data, operate a pc, communicate, listen, and assess information. The employee may move about the office complex, may travel to other office locations, and may lift, push, pull or move 10 to 15 pounds. Visual requirement includes distant, close and color vision, and ability to adjust focus.

WORK ENVIRONMENT:

The role will primarily function within the professional IT and business office environments located in South Florida; some occasional business travel is required. The space is in compliance with safety, environment, health, and accessibility requirements. The work environments are maintained to reinforce collaboration, motivation, and innovation to help maintain a vibrant and distinctive culture and a diverse workforce.

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. We'll hope to see you onboard soon!

It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.

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