The IT team at Kindercare creates digital experiences that help working parents stay informed on their child's early education and so much more. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, KinderCare operates more than 1,500 early learning centers and employs more than 32,000 team members. In 2021, KinderCare earned its fifth Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award - one of only four companies worldwide to win this award for five consecutive years. Our devoted family of education providers leads the nation in accreditation and includes KinderCare® Learning Centers, KinderCare Education at Work®, Champions® Before- and After-School Programs. We keep this team online and help parents be where their kids are, even from the office.
Job Summary:
KinderCare Education is looking for an experienced Product Owner to shape and drive products that support the development of the KCE Digital Family Experience Program. This effort will have a large focus on technology modernization but also a focus on culture and operations - to embrace digital technologies and applications, agile ways of working and methodologies, DevOps, and a culture centered around the KinderCare family experience. The Product Owner will be responsible for owning, and maintaining the team-level Product Backlog, including definition of user stories and acceptance criteria and working directly with internal and external partners to successfully deliver value. This role will need to be able to demonstrate the delivery of business results through proactive problem solving, data-driven decision making, and rich interpersonal coordination across functional teams.
What You'll Do:
KinderCare Education is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law.
Job Summary:
KinderCare Education is looking for an experienced Product Owner to shape and drive products that support the development of the KCE Digital Family Experience Program. This effort will have a large focus on technology modernization but also a focus on culture and operations - to embrace digital technologies and applications, agile ways of working and methodologies, DevOps, and a culture centered around the KinderCare family experience. The Product Owner will be responsible for owning, and maintaining the team-level Product Backlog, including definition of user stories and acceptance criteria and working directly with internal and external partners to successfully deliver value. This role will need to be able to demonstrate the delivery of business results through proactive problem solving, data-driven decision making, and rich interpersonal coordination across functional teams.
What You'll Do:
- Actively participate in Product Backlog grooming sessions, retrospectives, defect management, and project team release planning sessions
- Work with stakeholders to review, accept, and prioritize business problem statements, requirements, create business features, and user stories
- Own, prioritize, and maintain the Product Backlog, including definition of user stories and acceptance criteria
- Serve as the "voice of the customer" for the team by bringing this perspective in a detailed and well communicated way throughout the product lifecycle
- Perform as a functional bridge between external partners and internal stakeholders
- Develop, engage, and manage backlogs with the Scrum teams
- Work with Scrum Masters to help direct, motivate, and guide the agile delivery teams
- Review completed development work to ensure specified acceptance criteria have been met and that features and stories meet the definition of done
- Formally accept the user stories once all acceptance criteria are met and demo-ed
- Continuously and transparently communicate the prioritization of the Product Backlog and the status of development efforts with internal stakeholders via system demos, agile events, and team/program-level activities
- Effectively translate and communicate business concepts and rules into technical objectives
- Collaborate with the technical teams across the organization (including solution architects, development leads, product managers, and others) to ensure we are meeting our product objectives through appropriate solution design
- Proactively work with the product managers and solution architects to ensure that solutions being developed now will continue to be able to be extended and improved into the futureWho You Are:
- 3 years as a Product Owner in an agile development environment
- Experience using core business applications and the ability to translate this experience into KinderCare's ecosystem and environment
- Familiarity with Salesforce or equivalent CRM platforms
- Experience with business systems processes related to CRMs, integrated applications and systems
- Experience using agile planning tools (Jira, Azure DevOps, etc.) Specific experience using Jira a plus
- Familiarity with services sales cycle, methodologies, and customer conversion and retention
- Proven track record of managing all aspects of a successful product throughout its lifecycle
- Ability to review and accept the outcome of the demo/sprint/release for feature completeness and quality and provide feedback
- Skilled at working effectively with cross functional teams in a matrixed organization
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), or
- Agile certification or training (e.g. Scrum Master, SAFe, etc)
- Salesforce Certified (Dev, Solutions, and/or Admin) or equivalent experience
- Experience with customer data platforms and the integration with downstream data elements
- Experience with customer portals, technology and operational processes to facilitate seamless internal and external communications
- Knowledge of Payment Services, including Operational and Technical aspects
- Experience with service management ticketing systems (e.g. ServiceNow)
- Understanding of b2b service relationships
KinderCare Education is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law.