Senior Technical Product Owner

About the Role

Ascend Learning, a leading healthcare and learning technology company, connects a powerful portfolio of brands serving students, educators, and employers with outcomes-based, data-driven solutions across the lifecycle of learning. From testing to certification, Ascend Learning products are used by physicians, emergency medical professionals, nurses, allied health professionals, certified personal trainers, financial advisors, skilled trades professionals, and insurance brokers.

The Senior Technical Product Owner (TPO) is the voice of the product and the singular role driving CRM business requirements into agile teams. This role serves as a key conduit between business/product objectives and technical execution within the Enterprise Applications space, enabling effective and efficient execution of technical product development with a clear understanding of the desired end product to meet internal customer needs.

Where You’ll Work

This position will work a hybrid schedule from one of our office locations in Leawood, KS or Burlington, MA preferred. Remote will be considered within the United States.

Responsibilities

• Create, balance, and prioritize feature requests across multiple business groups, ensuring alignment with the core CRM platform roadmap.
• Conduct work prioritization and sequencing, manage sprints, and develop new features/products; continuously map back to integrated roadmap milestones to ensure alignment on delivery.
• Act as the key resource between multiple business stakeholders and the engineering team, fostering collaboration across teams.
• Define and manage platform-level features: work closely with engineers to translate business requirements into technical execution plans.
• Prioritize and manage backlogs, maintaining a well-prioritized list of features and user stories; use feedback from user engagement to adapt/modify requirements, features, and product performance.
• Create and execute the product roadmap in collaboration with product, technology, and business partners, considering the enterprise shared services vision, business vision, market trends, and vendor roadmaps.
• Engage with Technical Product Managers and business stakeholders to gather and understand customer needs and requirements, incorporating feedback into the backlog.
• Modify/change product features and requirements in response to new information on markets/customers from Product Managers.
• Track and manage product development to ensure alignment with established product requirements and market/user feedback.
• Support development teams in refining the backlog during sprint planning by clarifying user stories and setting priorities.
• Oversee performance against success criteria, including customer perspective and UAT/OT.
• Drive alignment through effective and consistent communication.
• Deliver consistent and clear release notes.
• Support and drive documentation that meets customer needs and enables training and implementation of capabilities.
• Articulate risk and mitigations early and often.
• Drive decision-making on tradeoffs through a clear understanding of business needs, technical options, and viable alternatives.

Requirements

• High school diploma or GED required. Bachelor's degree in business administration, information technology, computer science, or a related field (or equivalent experience) preferred.
• 5+ years of experience in a combination of product ownership/management, consulting, Agile development, or information technology (project management alone is insufficient).
• Experience working in an Agile environment is strongly preferred.
• Experience working in a scaled Agile framework (SAFe) environment preferred.
• Experience working with CRM software (Dynamics 365 or Salesforce) preferred.
• Strong stakeholder management skills; experience balancing competing priorities across multiple levels of stakeholders.
• Experience in platform-level product development; prior experience managing shared platform capabilities.
• Experience working in a dynamic environment, adapting to changing priorities, market dynamics, and evolving business needs.
• Exceptional communication and collaboration skills; adept at working across different functions and diverse cultures.
• Ability to successfully translate business requirements into features and user stories and manage/prioritize a feature backlog.
• Ability to break down complex business problems into logical and deliverable work that ties back to business themes and priorities.
• Ability to ensure the vision for 'how a product needs to perform for a customer' is embodied in the design of the product, including technical specifications.
• In-depth understanding of Agile methodology (tools, processes, roles).
• Ability to understand minimum viable product requirements and prioritize accordingly.
• Strong digital acumen and understanding of digital technologies.

Pay

The current full-time, annualized base pay hiring range for this role is $102,300.00–$146,300.00. Individual compensation will be determined by various factors, including relevant experience, qualifications, current business needs, and local market factors. Most regular, full-time employees are eligible to participate in an Ascend incentive bonus or sales plan.

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Company-paid life insurance.
• 401(k) with company match.
• Paid time off and parental leave.
• Employee assistance program.
• Wellness programs such as Headspace and Airvet.
• Charitable matching program.