IT Product Owner - Platform Enablement - Costco Travel

About the Role

Costco Travel IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world, where the secret of Costco’s success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented, and our employees and members come first. Costco is known for its generosity, community service, and philanthropy, offering many opportunities for employees to volunteer and help others.

Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment working through exciting transformation efforts. Product Owners are responsible for defining requirements, assisting with the overall product roadmap and vision, and driving value at the scrum team level. They act as the “voice of the customer,” ensuring end-user needs are incorporated into the product from design to deployment. Product Owners author functional user stories to support day-to-day development of new features and capabilities.

The Platform Enablement team at Costco Travel provides tools, products, and design patterns to improve application agility, resilience, and the overall engineering experience. The Technical Product Owner will partner with the Technical Product Manager, Delivery Manager, and stakeholders to translate platform strategy into a detailed, prioritized backlog and collaborate with an agile delivery team to prioritize, implement, measure, iterate, and learn from the tools they build.

Responsibilities

• Supports business strategy by forming a backlog of features and user stories for use by the delivery team.
• Articulates requirements for each user story with detailed acceptance criteria.
• Uses data and insights from multiple sources that benefit the business and our members.
• Pursues incremental delivery by looking for ways to meet business goals and learn from members and end users through frequent, measurable enhancements.
• Works collaboratively and uses best practices with the delivery team to support backlog refinement, sprint planning, and long-term release planning.
• Monitors and improves product health.
• Ensures completed stories meet acceptance criteria by reviewing test plans, the output of automated testing, or contributing to manual testing efforts.
• Prioritizes and collaborates in the resolution of issues and defects.
• Seeks and improves processes across the entire product team.
• Improves processes across the delivery team by using retrospectives to inspect and adapt.
• Communicates effectively with team members, stakeholders, and levels of management.
• Provides direction, mentorship, and coaching to junior Product Owners.
• Stays current on product ownership and applies product development and agile delivery practices.

Requirements

• 3+ years of current experience working on a Scrum and/or Agile team.
• 3+ years of current experience working on a Services Oriented or Microservice development platform.
• 3+ years of experience creating documentation for communication with varied audiences.
• 2+ years of experience working on technical development projects.
• Deep understanding of business requirements elicitation.
• Proficient in business modeling, project scoping, and use case creation.
• Expertise in utilizing standard documentation tools/utilities.

Qualifications

• Experience leading a Platform Engineering, Internal Developer Portal (IDP), or Platform Tooling team.
• Familiarity with: Java, JavaScript, Hibernate, MS SQL, NoSQL, REST, Docker, Kubernetes, Swagger, Helm, Istio, TKG, SRE, Python, DevOps, SonarQube, Feature Flagging Systems, IDP development, etc.
• Deadline-oriented and capable of self-management.
• Strong work ethic, demonstrated attention to detail, excellent time management, and organizational skills.
• Ability to work both independently and within a close team environment.
• Ability to listen to and understand business needs (experience with a travel technology organization is a plus).
• Proficient in Microsoft Workspace applications, including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams.

Pay

Level 2 - $105,000 - $135,000

Level 3 - $130,000 - $160,000

Benefits

• Paid time off.
• Health benefits: medical, dental, vision, hearing aid, pharmacy, behavioral health, and employee assistance.
• Health care reimbursement account.
• Dependent care assistance plan.
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance.
• AD&D insurance.
• Life insurance.
• 401(k).
• Stock purchase plan (for eligible employees).