Product Owner – Enterprise Systems

Job description

Our client is a Tech/Family Office company serving the investments, foundations, and activities of a prominent family. With a broad mandate, the organization oversees diverse assets and programs, including multiple foundations and institutes. Across its entities, it manages hundreds of employees and oversees significant annual expenditures, ranging from grants and gifts to private investments and operational costs. They are seeking a Product Owner to drive the strategy, prioritization, and delivery of complex enterprise systems spanning investment management, grants administration, financial, and legal operations. This is a high-ownership role in a fast-moving environment where requirements are frequently ambiguous, stakeholder needs evolve quickly, and the ability to drive clarity is just as important as the ability to ship. You will own the product backlog, align cross-functional teams, and ensure that engineering effort consistently delivers measurable business value. The ideal candidate is a decisive, systems-oriented operator who thrives without a detailed playbook and knows how to cut through complexity to keep teams moving. ### Responsibilities: - **Own the Product Backlog:** Define, prioritize, and maintain a well-groomed backlog of features, enhancements, and technical work across enterprise systems. Make clear prioritization calls and communicate the rationale to stakeholders and engineering teams. - **Drive Clarity from Ambiguity:** Operate confidently in environments where requirements are incomplete or shifting. Facilitate discovery sessions, ask incisive questions, and convert loosely defined business needs into precise user stories, acceptance criteria, and actionable specs — without waiting for perfect information. - **Enterprise Systems Ownership:** Serve as the primary product owner for large-scale internal platforms handling complex, high-volume data across operational teams, grants programs, financial operations, and multi-entity reporting. Understand data flows, system dependencies, and integration points well enough to make smart tradeoffs. - **Stakeholder Alignment:** Partner with the grants, finance, and operations teams to translate strategic priorities into a coherent product roadmap. Manage competing demands, surface tradeoffs clearly, and build consensus without losing velocity. - **Agile Delivery Leadership:** Lead planning, refinement, demos, and retrospectives. Unblock teams quickly, make scope decisions in real time, and hold a high bar for what gets shipped. - **AI & Automation Integration:** Identify and scope opportunities to embed AI-driven workflows, natural language interfaces, and intelligent automation into enterprise systems — improving data quality, reporting efficiency, and decision support for end users. - **Data & Analytics Requirements:** Define requirements for dashboards, reporting interfaces, and analytics features that surface actionable insight from large, complex datasets. Collaborate with data engineers and BI teams to ensure outputs are accurate, performant, and user-relevant. - **Vendor & Integration Management:** Own product-level relationships with key vendors and data providers. Define integration requirements, evaluate build vs. buy decisions, and ensure third-party systems meet long-term scalability needs. - **Cross-Functional Collaboration:** Work fluidly across engineering, UX/design, data, finance, and operations. Translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders and be the connective tissue that keeps everyone aligned on what's being built and why. - **Travel:** Willingness to travel occasionally as needed to meet with stakeholders, attend planning sessions, or support key project milestones. ### Qualifications & Requirements: - 5+ years of experience as a Product Owner or Product Manager for complex enterprise systems — grants management, investment management, financial operations, ERP, or data-intensive platforms strongly preferred. - Demonstrated ability to thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments — comfortable owning decisions with incomplete information and course-correcting quickly as context evolves. - Proven track record of driving clarity: converting vague stakeholder needs into well-defined, actionable product requirements that engineering teams can execute confidently. - High agency and self-starter mentality — you identify gaps, create structure where none exists, and move work forward without needing to be directed. - Strong command of agile methodologies; experience owning and grooming a complex multi-team backlog in Jira or equivalent. - Solid understanding of data architecture, system integrations, and APIs — enough to participate meaningfully in technical discussions and make informed scoping decisions. - Experience defining requirements for data-heavy applications: dashboards, reporting tools, analytics views, and multi-entity data models. - Familiarity with AI/ML capabilities and practical experience scoping AI-assisted features for enterprise users. - Active user of AI productivity tools with genuine curiosity about how they can accelerate product development and improve user outcomes. - Exceptional communication and facilitation skills — equally effective in an executive briefing, a stakeholder workshop, and a sprint review. - Familiarity with Figma sufficient to review and give feedback on UX designs, wireframes, and prototypes. - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, or related field; advanced degree a plus. ### Ideal Candidate Profile: - Decisive under ambiguity — gathers just enough context to make a good call, makes it, and moves. - Brings structure to chaos without slowing teams down — backlogs are clear, tickets are precise, acceptance criteria leave no room for interpretation. - High-agency by default: doesn't wait for a brief, writes it; doesn't wait for a meeting, schedules it. - Genuinely excited about AI and actively uses it to work faster, prototype ideas, and push the boundaries of enterprise software. - Holds the details — knows the difference between a well-scoped story and a vague one, and won't let the latter into a sprint. - Flexible and energized by a fast-moving environment — adapts quickly, reprioritizes without friction, keeps momentum when the ground shifts. - Earns trust across disciplines: engineers respect their specs, designers value their feedback, executives trust their judgment. ### Additional Details: - Only open to U.S. Citizens or Green Card holders. - The role is in-office (LA) - West Hollywood. - Compensation includes a strong base + bonus (no equity, as they’re private).