Director, Product Development-Principal Product Owner

Company: CO-OP Financial Services
Location: Des Moines
Posted on: October 18, 2020

Job Description:

The Opportunity

We are seeking a talented Director, Product Development- Principal Product Owner to execute on the product development strategy for CO-OP Financial Services’ products and solutions; develop delivery and implementation of Product Road-map for multi-phase product initiatives, follow the product development methodology & discipline within CO-OP Financial Services in collaboration with cross functional business units. Responsibilities of this role include managing a team of product professionals, product assessments, business case creation, business requirements, operating model, product positioning/commercialization, competitive analysis, product integration, market launch, and ongoing product lifecycle management. This position requires the candidate to delve deeper into big data, data analytics, machine learning, understand algorithms and statistics to create data products & solutions in partnership with technology teams.

What You Can Look Forward to

Supervisor Functions & Responsibilities:

Directs and manages team of Product Managers.

Provides overall direction, coordination, and evaluation of the department.

Manages supervisory responsibilities in accordance with the organization’s policies and applicable laws.

Responsibilities include interviewing, hiring, training, and terminating employees; planning, assigning, and directing work; appraising performance; rewarding and disciplining employees; addressing complaints and resolving problems.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

Leads the market analysis process for new products/services development to determine customer needs, industry direction, competitive product and market positioning and overall product strategy.

Creates and executes on a compelling product vision.

Develops business plan, including strategic requirements, such as product design and strategic fit, go-to-market strategy, plus financial business case; pricing, cost, revenue forecasts, capital costs, profit.

Analyzes interconnectedness of products/partners/technologies to create best of breed products/services.

Manages a team of product professionals through the entire product development cycle including requirements (functional, operational, and technical), documentation, resource management, system integration, testing compliance, product launch and implementation.

Manages capital and expense budgets to ensure adherence to budget while maintaining requirements for the product.

Works with development teams, 3rd-party vendors, associations, and internal stakeholders to execute on development, launch and implementation plans.

Guides user experience design planning and delivery with the UX and Technology teams. Be the customer advocate for solution designs.

Identifies and interprets customer/stakeholder needs and translate feedback and user testing results into feature/functionality requirements.

Closely collaborates with Marketing, providing rich content and strategic thinking to develop and maintain product positioning and messaging, utilizing various delivery vehicles (such as white papers, blogs, sales tools, etc.).

Negotiates costs and rules of engagement with vendors; demonstrating ability to work with legal counsel and contracts department to ensure that vendor and customer contracts accurately reflect the product and business perspective in our contracts.

Assists Sales and Business Development teams as needed in securing or maintaining existing key clients.

Analyzes and defines roles and responsibilities of all ecosystem players and distribution channels.

Conducts competitive analysis of vendors and their product offerings to evaluate and refine product positioning and value proposition.

Creates and delivers presentations to both internal and external audiences, virtually or in person.

Manages, mentors, and develops direct reports; establishes quantitative and qualitative performance measures related to delivery of committed and planned product initiatives.

Serves as a thought leader for CO-OP in assigned area of focus.

Reacts to change productively, handle other essential tasks as assigned, and re-deploy resources efficiently.

Responsible for reporting risks that are identified to the appropriate team and/or management. Additionally, responsible for managing, monitoring and reporting risks within the scope of your work area, to include, but not limited to Information Security risks.

Actively supports our CO-OP culture and embraces our core values of Work as Partners, Communicate Openly and Honestly, Demonstrate Excellence and Champion Change in all interactions.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

Required Education and Experience:

Bachelor’s degree and/or minimum five years of product experience, at least three years in a product management role.

Professional background in strategic and tactical product management.

Proven track record and experience in presentation skills to both a large and small group.

Proven track record of bringing successful products to market on time.

Proven staff management skills in leading resources to a higher and strategic thought process.

Previous experience with visualization products (Tableau, QuickSight, PowerBi, etc).

Prior experience and working knowledge of the Big Data tools/platforms (Hadoop, Redshift, etc).

Strong UX and Data Visualization knowledge.

Essential Knowledge:

Knowledge of strategic and product development methodologies.

Knowledge of strategic planning process.

Knowledge of product life cycle management tenets.

Knowledge of financial forecasting, creation of budgets and financial justification for product business decisions.

Advanced understanding and knowledge of financial services industry, preferably credit unions and payments industry.

Knowledge of different product pricing strategies.

Knowledge of technical product management.

Essential Skills & Abilities:

Exceptional analytical skills.

Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Accomplished presentation skills and comfort level in front of C-level executives.

Strong negotiation skills and vendor management skills.

Skilled at driving projects to completion in a timely manner, meeting pre-determined deadlines.

Strong requirements gathering skills.

Ability to synthesize disparate and complex technology and summarize key points concisely for consumption by different levels of the organization, including executive team.

Skilled at defining customer needs and using that knowledge to defining functional product specifications.

Strong market research and analysis skills, including sizing and market need.

Skilled at evaluation of business and product opportunities and strategic product planning.

Ability to assess impact on organization and operational environment of new product initiatives.

Excellent listening skills.

Proficient in Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook.

Outstanding execution skills.

Financial analysis skills—to assist finance department.

Why Join CO-OP?

CO-OP is committed to fostering a workplace where every employee feels valued, respected, and connected. We are dedicated to understanding, attracting and engaging a diverse workforce where every employee can live up to their value; ensuring that our employee base reflects the consumers we serve. The result of this effort is an inclusive environment where diverse talent thrives. You will be part of an organization that focuses on a strong culture and embodies the credit union movement philosophy of People Helping People. CO-OP’s commitment to reflecting our own core values and purpose extends beyond how we serve our clients and the products that we deliver.

With more than 35 years of industry leadership, CO-OP Financial Services is the largest, most comprehensive credit union service organization in the nation. CO-OP serves as THE credit union technology engine, bringing payments solutions, engagement services and strategic counsel to help credit unions optimize member experiences to consistently provide seamless, personalized multi-channel offerings, while delivering secure, sophisticated fraud mitigation service.

CO-OP serves more than 3,000 client credit unions, with 60 million debit and credit cardholders, nearly 30,000 surcharge-free ATMs and more than 5,600 shared branches nationwide. Our vast technological ecosystem facilitates more than 6.5 billion transactions every year and equips credit unions of all sizes to deepen member engagement and prosper in the fast-paced world of fintech.

The Perks

Fun, challenging and, collaborative work environment with passionate colleagues that care deeply about the intersection of technology and human-centered financial services.

Great Work/Life Benefits – Paid Time Off (PTO), Maternity, Parental, Family Care, Adoption Leave Programs, Community Volunteer Time Off, and 10 Paid Holidays.

Health benefits – medical, dental, & vision plus wellness programs and gym reimbursements.

401K with generous company match.

Tuition reimbursement.

Keywords: CO-OP Financial Services, Des Moines , Director, Product Development-Principal Product Owner, Other , Des Moines, Iowa