Product Owner - First American Financial Corporation

Who We Are

Join a team that puts its People First! Since 1889, First American (NYSE: FAF) has held an unwavering belief in its people. They are passionate about what they do, and we are equally passionate about fostering an environment where all feel welcome, supported, and empowered to be innovative and reach their full potential. Our inclusive, people-first culture has earned our company numerous accolades, including being named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list for nine consecutive years. We have also earned awards as a best place to work for women, diversity and LGBTQ+ employees, and have been included on more than 50 regional best places to work lists. First American will always strive to be a great place to work, for all. For more information, please visit www.careers.firstam.com.

What We Do

Product Management defines, promotes and communicates the strategic roadmap for current and future products. Work closely with internal and external stakeholders to gather insights, understand current business process, challenges, and opportunities. Identify potential products and emerging markets; conduct market research; generate product requirements; determine specifications; create product roadmap; conduct competitive assessments and product positioning; and craft marketing strategies/campaigns for new product introduction/launch. Act as primary contact and product evangelist to build awareness, understanding, and user acceptance. Works with customers to develop and prioritize high level product requirements and ensure customer satisfaction and goals are met. Work closely with technology, sales and other cross functional teams to determine plans for product implementation, upgrades and deployments. Participate in creating and driving product positioning and customer messaging.

Summary

First American Trust Digital Innovation and Business Services is seeking a Certified Product Owner with 4+ years of product owner experience to join our growing team. The candidate should be passionate about Agile, possess an Agile mindset, and understand the role a product owner plays in maximizing client value. The product owner will partner with product management, business owners, clients and other stakeholders to define and transform ideas into product features and user stories with deliverable acceptance criteria.

The ideal candidate is driven by results and possesses strong interpersonal skills, problem solving skills, a positive attitude, and is comfortable leading and actively participating in cross-functional teams.

The role requires strong knowledge of Agile methodology and business processes to prioritize competing user stories and clearly maintain a consistent vision for the product team. In addition, a candidate must possess strong organizational, planning and collaboration skills with a consistent track record for on-time delivery of commitments.

Product Owner Responsibilities 

Serve as the voice of the client; develop and maintain agreed upon product roadmap based upon strategic goals, product vision:

• Create, maintain and prioritize product backlog (features and stories) from the product roadmap and strategic portfolio backlog, required system integrations and problem management discoveries
• Interact with stakeholders regularly to understand business value and prioritize work that will deliver value to the customer
• Understand the direction and vision the business has set forth and communicates that to the team
• Understand enterprise OKR’s and ensure that features roll up to OKR’s
• Ensure that wireframes, prototypes or workflows are created and signed off by the stakeholders before any work is done by development team or vendor

Accountable for assigned vendor releases, SLAs, and timely incident resolution

• Monitor vendor’s application release calendar, adding updates/upgrades to product roadmap
• Review release notes for impacts, enhancements, bug fixes and potentially new usable product capabilities
• Communicate any impacts to product owner peers, obtain alignment and commitment to releases
• Communicate new vendor application capabilities and bug fixes that benefit the business and or external clients

Accountable for aligning to Agile/ SAFe principles.

• Regularly communicate with product manager to ensure product roadmap aligns with business goals looking ahead at least a year
• Collaborate with product manager to ensure product features and enablers support strategic business goals
• Work closely with product manager to define and develop product roadmap and vision.  Solicits feedback from product team to determine high-level feasibility of the roadmap
• Prioritizes product backlog to align with the enterprise priorities
• Ensures sprint goals are set and communicated to the team before the sprint starts
• Maintains product backlog with at least two sprints-worth of well-written, prioritized and refined stories
• Contributes to the feature list with input from product team
• Own delivery and overall quality of product features from ideation through testing, acceptance, release and inspection
• In collaboration with Scrum Master, measure and communicate the progress of product team’s efforts to clients and leadership

Accountable for product team leadership:

• Represent the product team to the business owners, clients and the end users (i.e., stakeholders)
• Work with analysts and other product team members to build subject matter expertise of the overall product
• Know and understand high-level product architecture
• Lead the team in taking ownership of all aspects of the product
• Write well-defined product user stories with clear and testable acceptance criteria
• Groom product backlog, refine user stories to communicate value, readying for upcoming Program Increment
• Communicate product priorities and gain alignment with and commitment to delivery from product team
• Own end-to-end release of new features from ideation through testing, acceptance, release and validation
• Ensure product documentation, release notes, support guides and user guides are created and maintained
• Perform duties outside of normal business hours depending on business needs
• Work with the product team to ensure change management and incident management processes are followed
• Works with the team to ensure product vulnerabilities are remediated based on age and criticality of vulnerability

Knowledge, Experience & Qualifications

   Candidate must possess:

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline, business or related field
• 4+ years of experience as a product owner on a scrum team in a fast-paced scaling environment
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate technical issues to nontechnical and technical audiences
• Outstanding presentation, communication and information sharing skill
• Strong problem-solving skills
• Working experience with common product management tools, such as Jira, Trello or Azure DevOps
• Industry certification: Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM) or Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) is highly desired
• Experience stepping into new and unfamiliar markets and business environments, and learning to identify and translate the requirements of those environments into a coherent product vision
• Ability to individually influence others and garner support for recommendations and priorities
• Creative thinking with good interpersonal skills and relationship building with team members
• Ability to work with cross-functional teams to deliver a common goal

The pay range for this role is $109,700.00 - $146,200.00

This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting.  Pay is based on a number of factors which may include job-related knowledge, skills, experience, business requirements and geographic location.

Disclaimer

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal work hours and/or responsibilities from time to time, as needed.

What We Offer

By choice, we don’t simply accept individuality – we embrace it, we support it, and we thrive on it! Our People First Culture celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s the key to our success. We are proud to foster an authentic and inclusive workplace For All. You are free and encouraged to bring your entire, unique self to work. First American is an equal opportunity employer in every sense of the term.

Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.