Product Owner

Company

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas CityWhen you join the Federal Reserve – The nation’s central bank – you’ll play a key role, collaborating with leading tech professionals to strengthen and protect our economic, financial and payments systems. We dedicate more than $1 billion to technology each year to support the Federal Reserve and our economy, and we’re building a dynamic and diverse team for our future. Bring your passion and expertise, and we’ll provide the opportunities that will challenge you and propel your growth – along with a wide range of benefits and perks that support your health, wealth, and life.****

Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) delivers a suite of payments services to financial institutions via FedLine® Solutions, Fedwire®, National Settlement Service (NSS), FedCash®, FedACH® (Automated Clearing House), Check Services, and the FedNow® Service. In 2020, we undertook a strategic effort to transform FRFS from a product and support office framework to a national, enterprise-focused organization. The enterprise structure integrated the prior retail, wholesale, cash, and customer relations product and support offices into a new organization, which was further joined by the FedNow team in early 2024. Our North Star strategy, with the new structure, is to offer a fully integrated product suite that provides speed, resilience, and choice in meeting the payments needs of financial institutions across the United States. Through our evolved structure, we will meet the needs of the marketplace for new products and services more quickly, seek to provide a more robust and unified customer experience across our financial service offerings, and create new career growth opportunities for FRFS staff.

We are seeking leaders to set the vision, strategy, values, and priorities that enable FRFS to achieve its mission. Our leaders must demonstrate a strategic, action-oriented mindset focused on intellectual curiosity, agility, accountability, and the ability to drive innovation through experimentation. To achieve our vision for a people-focused organization with a strong collaborative and innovative culture, we expect our leaders to champion an inclusive environment and demonstrate our values in how we work and interact with each other and our broader community.

The Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) Technical Payment Systems organization (FRFS) is responsible for software development, quality assurance testing, and day-to-day production operations of a payment product suite which includes Fedwire, Securities, FedACH (Automated Clearinghouse), Check, FedCash, and Fedline products. In this role the FRFS, in consultation with other System stakeholders, helps to set the strategic direction for US central bank payment services, coordinates product enhancements impacting the services and their customers, and ensures that operating sites meet service level agreements for resiliency and performance.

As a Product Owner for a portion of the FedACH and Check systems, the Product Owner is aligned with the Lead Product Owner & Business Product Management and understands the product vision, goals, and roadmap. They translate business wants and needs into a prioritized set of requirements by conducting business process analysis, needs assessments, and preliminary cost/benefits analyses to align with a robust information technology roadmap. They manage and prioritize the team’s backlog accordingly and lead their respective Agile team in delivering most important customer/stakeholder outcomes. Product Owners may also prepare functional, system and program specifications and assist in implementation of systems, as well as participate in System initiatives and/or workgroups.

Key Activities:

• A successful candidate will be a leader with experience operating in complex organizations and delivering well supported solutions. The Product Owner must:
• Continuously learn about the customer, their business needs, and contribution of the product to their desired outcomes
• Work with the Lead Product Owner and Product Management to communicate, re-enforce the vision, goals, and product roadmap, in the form of features/stories with the Agile team.
• Possess enough business and technical knowledge about the product to engage in team discussions.
• Work closely with architecture, engineering, and quality assurance to ensure the right customer problem is solved.
• Communicate with both technical and business stakeholders to understand and gather requirements and translate into technical specification when necessary.
• Decompose and prioritize epics/features into user stories and define detailed test acceptance criteria.
• Ensure technology-driven and risk-remediation requirements are prioritized to prevent the accumulation of technical debt and other vulnerabilities.
• Support the team as a subject matter expert representing the business and clarify any arising questions from the agile team.
• Support application development with enabler stories.
• Determine if the work done to complete a story met success criteria and accepts when satisfied.
• Assist in the analysis of defects and enhancements to determine severity and priority as well as overall validity.
• Contribute to discussions on risks, dependencies, issues, and schedule updates as needed.
• Ensures agreement on actions to address dependencies between broader FRFS teams
• Present working software to stakeholders at team and system demos.
• Prepare innovative product proposals and messaging for product forums; present to Group-level governance forums
• Utilize data and feedback to make informed decisions and continuously improve the product.
• Actively monitor product-specific OKRs and manage to targets with stakeholders.
• Contribute to the elaboration and advancement of the roles and responsibilities for this position, identifying process improvements and sharing with peers.
• Actively promote Agile behaviors within business, technology and across FRFS.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology or any technical related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Typically requires a minimum of 6 years of related experience.
• Ability to bridge the business/IT divide in a way that establishes rapport and gains understanding.
• Possess a strong understanding of business requirement development and analysis including use cases, functional specifications, user interface specifications, etc.
• Effective problem solver with ability to identify challenges, brainstorm ideas and collaborate with cross functional teams to implement effective solutions.
• Ability to work independently with minimal oversight and manage multiple deliverables simultaneously; take ownership of issue resolution and completion of high quality deliverables.
• Strong teamwork, leadership, critical thinking, multitasking, and time management skills in a highly matrixed organization.
• Ability to develop deep subject matter expertise for specific products and its broader ecosystem to effectively drive enhancements, support internal stakeholders and influence broader decision making.
• Ability to understand and resolve blockers and delivery risk quickly and without the need for escalation outside their product scope.
• Ability to understand competing priorities across technology and business areas, clearly articulate options, and use personal influence to define the resolution across their product set and areas with payment interdependencies.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, ability to articulate ideas clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Background in financial services industry, understanding of check and Automated Clearinghouse (ACH) payments, and managing third party/vendor delivery
• Certified Product Owner in Scrum or SAFe, preferably Advanced level, and recent JIRA experience are highly desirable

Additional Details

Locations:

• Hybrid, on-site requirement will be determined by hiring district
• Remote eligibility will be determined by hiring district
• The selected candidate’s new job title and associated pay range will be determined by the employing District and will continue to be subject to the employing District’s people policies and practices (i.e., remote/hybrid work posture, etc.).
• Eligible districts for Hire: Boston, MA- New York, NY- Philadelphia, PA- Cleveland, OH- Richmond, VA- Atlanta, GA- Chicago, IL- St. Louis, MO- Minneapolis, MN- Kansas City, MO- Dallas, TX- San Fran, CA

Screening:

This position has additional screening requirements due to the information accessed while performing the job. These additional screenings would be initiated at the time of offer acceptance and can take up to a couple of months to be completed. Depending on the district in which you may be hired, you can begin work before the screening is completed; however, continued employment is contingent on acceptable screening results. The areas screened may include education/employment verification, criminal history, credit history, and reference checks.

Sponsorship:

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future.

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Full Time / Part Time

Full time

Regular / Temporary

Regular

Job Exempt (Yes / No)

Yes

Job Category

Other

Work Shift

First (United States of America)

The Federal Reserve Banks believe that diversity and inclusion among our employees is critical to our success as an organization, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. The Federal Reserve Banks are committed to equal employment opportunity for employees and job applicants in compliance with applicable law and to an environment where employees are valued for their differences.

Always verify and apply to jobs on Federal Reserve System Careers ([https://rb.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/FRS>) or through verified Federal Reserve Bank social media channels.

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