Senior Finance Product Owner - Project Accounting

Job Summary

The Accounting Senior Product Owner will set and communicate the product vision, develop and maintain the product roadmap, and define key operational processes like the product release schedule. The individual in this role will work closely with business partners and customers to define epics that align with key business objectives for the Scrum or Kanban team. This Senior Product Owner tracks and manages product funding and defines work priorities for individuals dedicated to the product team. They will balance new features against continuous improvement, system health, and support.

What You'll Do

• Define and communicate the product vision, roadmap, and epics to meet customer and business needs
• Own the product backlog, managing and prioritizing user stories, decomposing epics into features, and continuous improvement work
• Plan, manage, and track product funding. Is fully responsible for product budget and profit plan
• Develops and maintains product-specific persona and customer journeys
• Work closely with business stakeholders and customers, understanding their priorities and defining business outcomes and KPIs for the product in collaboration with those key stakeholders
• Communicate goals for product increments and releases. Define goals for team sprints. Support the onboarding of internal and external resources
• Accountable for product support, stability, and governance: including data, policy, cybersecurity, and usage
• Act as a functional expert in areas related to the product
• Define product processes (e.g., release schedule) and support process improvement activities across product processes (Lean, Agile, Scrum, DevSecOps, etc.)
• Understand the different types of projects and full end to end lifecycles to enable robust process definitions with other key capability owners
• Understand commercial, business and go-to-market strategies where applicable
• Support a Secure Product Development Lifecycle approach that establishes a strong cybersecurity focus and culture across the entire engineering lifecycle
• Manage contracts with software and service vendors to support the product strategy
• Drive development of features that provide rigorous project financial tracking and cost control
• Champion capabilities like project budgeting, cost forecasting, and profitability analysis to give stakeholders real-time visibility into project spend vs. budget
• Set product outcomes around improved cost transparency
• Embed robust financial controls and compliance checks into the product
• Ensure all project accounting processes and data handling meet corporate and regulatory standards (e.g. SOX, revenue recognition policies, capital vs. expense treatment)

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree from an accredited institution
• Min 5+ years specifically in highly complex Accounting projects and programs
• Minimum of 7 years of experience as an analyst, project manager, engineer, business manager or program lead on moderate to highly complex Accounting projects and programs
• 2+ years of experience as a Product Owner or equivalent position within large global corporation
• Significant understanding of Corporate Accounting Principles
• Expertise in SAP’s Project Systems module and Oracle’s Project Accounting module, including how they handle Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), project lifecycles, and financial postings
• Understanding of integration points between the project accounting system and other enterprise tools
• Practical knowledge and experience with product management and modern product delivery processes
• Practical knowledge of and experience working with Agile, Scrum, and/or Kanban software delivery teams
• General understanding of DevSecOps principles
• General familiarity with modern software development principles including code management, test automation, APIs, microservices, and cloud services

Priorities

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• Good team-oriented interpersonal skills
• Ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines