Product Manager

About the role

Digital Enterprise Technology (DET) is seeking a hands-on Senior Product Owner to support Time Tracking, Absence, and Benefits systems within the CIO organization. This temporary role is focused on execution and delivery. The Senior Product Owner will take business needs from initial intake through requirements, configuration coordination, testing, defect resolution, release, and post-production validation. The role requires someone who can quickly learn the current environment, work through an existing backlog, and independently move work to completion. This is a techno-functional position—not a purely strategic product role or a passive coordination role. The successful candidate will work directly with HR, Benefits, Payroll, Engineering, Compliance, vendors, and business teams to deliver accurate, practical solutions across Workday and connected systems.

Responsibilities

Requirements and Backlog Execution

• Gather and clarify requirements for Time Tracking, Absence, Leave, and Benefits enhancements and production issues.
• Translate business needs into detailed user stories, acceptance criteria, configuration requirements, workflow rules, and test scenarios.
• Document business rules involving time entry, approvals, overtime, accruals, leave eligibility, benefits eligibility, enrollment, and life events.
• Identify edge cases, regional variations, data requirements, and upstream or downstream impacts.
• Break work into sprint-ready items and ensure each item meets the team's Definition of Ready.
• Estimate effort and complexity in partnership with technical and functional teams.
• Maintain traceability between requirements, configuration decisions, and test cases.
• Keep backlog items, dependencies, decisions, and delivery status current in the team's work-tracking system.
• Participate actively in backlog refinement, sprint planning, standups, demonstrations, and retrospectives.

Configuration and Solution Delivery

• Perform or coordinate hands-on configuration in Workday Time Tracking, Absence, Benefits, and related HR applications.
• Configure and validate business processes, eligibility rules, accrual calculations, validation rules, notifications, approvals, and security assignments.
• Build and test changes in development or sandbox environments before production deployment.
• Evaluate configuration options and recommend practical solutions based on complexity, risk, timing, and business value.
• Review existing configurations and troubleshoot unexpected system behavior.
• Maintain configuration documentation, decision logs, mapping specifications, and operating procedures.
• Peer-review configurations produced by internal team members or service providers.
• Support Workday release preparation by reviewing applicable features, assessing impacts, completing regression testing, and coordinating required changes.

Testing, UAT, and Release Support

• Write and maintain test cases mapped to requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Execute functional, regression, integration, and end-to-end testing.
• Prepare test data and confirm that test environments are ready for use.
• Lead or support user acceptance testing, including test planning, scenario preparation, business-user guidance, and results tracking.
• Capture, triage, and resolve defects, then coordinate retesting through closure.
• Validate integrations with Payroll, Core HR, Finance, benefits carriers, leave administrators, and other third-party systems.
• Confirm that time, absence, and benefits transactions produce the expected downstream payroll and reporting results.
• Prepare release notes describing what changed, how it was tested, and any known impacts.
• Perform post-deployment smoke testing and production validation.

Production Support and Issue Resolution

• Investigate Time Tracking, Absence, and Benefits incidents and business escalations.
• Reproduce issues, analyze configuration and transaction data, identify root causes, and coordinate corrective action.
• Work directly with HR, Payroll, Benefits, Engineering, vendors, and managed service providers to resolve problems.
• Lead root-cause analysis for significant production issues and document findings, corrective actions, and preventive measures.
• Monitor open issues and ensure urgent or time-sensitive items continue moving toward resolution.
• Identify recurring problems and recommend configuration, process, or documentation improvements.
• Provide clear updates on issue status, business impact, dependencies, and expected resolution.
• Support operational activities when temporary coverage or additional delivery capacity is needed.

Integrations and Cross-System Coordination

• Assess how configuration changes could affect Payroll, Core HR, Finance, reporting, security, and third-party integrations.
• Document integration requirements, mapping rules, business logic, validation expectations, and error-handling requirements.
• Coordinate with integration engineers and vendors when changes have upstream or downstream dependencies.
• Support integration testing, file validation, reconciliation, and error resolution.
• Flag cross-system conflicts and delivery dependencies early.
• Assist with tenant refreshes, environment coordination, and data-validation activities as needed.

Compliance, Security, and Controls

• Translate applicable time, leave, benefits, labor, and data privacy requirements into system rules and test scenarios.
• Ensure required change approvals are obtained before configuration or development begins.
• Maintain evidence supporting audit requests, change controls, testing, and production deployment.
• Support access reviews, security assessments, and periodic recertification activities.
• Help validate segregation of duties and appropriate access to sensitive employee and benefits information.
• Identify compliance, security, and operational risks and escalate them promptly.
• Participate in Change Advisory Board or related governance processes when required.

Qualifications

• 6 years of experience in product ownership, business systems analysis, HR technology, Workday configuration, or a related techno-functional role.
• Hands-on experience with at least two of the following areas: Workday Time Tracking, Workday Absence or Leave Management, Workday Benefits, Workforce management, Payroll integrations.
• Experience translating business requirements into detailed user stories, configuration specifications, acceptance criteria, and test cases.
• Experience supporting enterprise system configuration, testing, UAT, releases, and production issues.
• Ability to independently manage assigned work from intake through production validation.
• Experience working in Agile teams and using tools such as Jira, Linear, or similar work-management platforms.
• Strong attention to detail and the ability to manage several active priorities.

Skills

• Understanding of time entry, approvals, overtime, schedules, accruals, leave eligibility, absence processing, benefits eligibility, enrollment, and life events.
• Understanding of how Time Tracking, Absence, and Benefits transactions affect Payroll and other downstream systems.
• Ability to analyze business processes, configuration rules, integrations, security, and transaction data.
• Experience with Workday reporting, calculated fields, business processes, eligibility rules, or security is preferred.
• Familiarity with APIs, integration files, data mappings, and cloud-based enterprise applications is helpful.
• Experience working with benefits carriers, leave administrators, payroll providers, or managed service providers is preferred.
• Able to enter an established environment, learn quickly, and deliver with limited supervision.
• Comfortable performing detailed execution work while maintaining visibility into broader business and system impacts.
• Willing to investigate problems directly and follow issues through resolution.
• Able to distinguish between items requiring immediate action and those that can be placed into the backlog.
• Clear and concise when documenting requirements, decisions, risks, test results, and production issues.
• Effective at collaborating with technical teams, HR specialists, business users, vendors, and senior stakeholders.

Pay

$60.00 - $65.00/hour.