Product Owner

Aquent is seeking a Product Owner (PO) to lead a cross-functional Agile development team dedicated to building, expanding, and optimizing a modern enterprise data lake powered by Databricks.

Positioned within a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) environment, this role sits at the intersection of business strategy, end-user insights, and complex data engineering. You will own the translation of business requirements into high-value, scalable, and secure data products that directly support our client's core health insurance products and benefits capabilities.

• Backlog Management & Execution: Define, prioritize, and ruthlessly manage the product backlog to ensure alignment with corporate roadmaps. Translate complex business needs into clear, actionable user stories complete with robust acceptance criteria.
• Data Lake Collaboration: Partner deeply with data architects and platform engineers to guide the design of the data lake, specifically focusing on data ingestion, transformation, and downstream consumption layers.
• Agile Leadership: Serve as the designated PO within the Insurance Products & Benefits Agile Release Train (ART). Own and facilitate daily Agile ceremonies, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Stakeholder & Tech Liaison: Act as the primary bridge between non-technical business stakeholders, data engineering squads, and enterprise platform teams. Track and proactively communicate progress, risks, and dependencies across the ART.
• User-Centered Validation: Drive continuous end-user engagement, leading feedback and validation sessions to ensure delivered data capabilities actively improve usability and accessibility for downstream consumers.

• Agile/PO Experience: 3+ years of dedicated experience operating as a Product Owner or Product Manager within structured Agile environments.
• Enterprise Agile Frameworks: Hands-on experience working within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) or a similar large-scale, matrixed enterprise Agile model.
• Data Architecture Fluency: A strong, fundamental understanding of data platforms, data lakes, and modern big data architecture concepts.
• Core Technology Stack: Direct experience partnering with or supporting engineering teams utilizing Databricks (or highly similar cloud-based data intelligence platforms).
• Healthcare Payer Domain: Domain experience in the healthcare or insurance sector, preferably touching health insurance products, member benefits, or plan build processes.
• Delivery Execution: Documented success in writing technical user stories, defining precise acceptance criteria, and managing steady team velocity.

• Cloud & Pipeline Literacy: Familiarity with the Azure cloud platform, ETL/ELT pipelines, data modeling, and enterprise data governance practices.
• Specialized Payer Systems: Background working with Medicare, Medicaid, or highly regulated health insurance payer systems.
• Tooling Proficiency: Direct experience utilizing enterprise project tracking software such as Jira Align and Azure DevOps (ADO).
• Design Thinking: Experience applying user-centered design principles, such as conducting user interviews or usability sessions with data consumers.
• Professional Certifications: SAFe PO/PM certification or Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO).

• Data-as-a-Product Mindset: The ability to treat data assets as standalone products designed with clear consumers, strict quality metrics, and measurable business value.
• Technical Acumen: Comfortable diving into complex architectural discussions about data pipelines, schemas, and cloud engineering constraints.
• Proactive Ownership: A self-starter who naturally identifies process bottlenecks or gaps in data usability and independently drives the cross-functional alignment needed to resolve them.

The target hiring compensation range for this role is $43 to $48 an hour. Compensation is based on several factors including, but not limited to education, relevant work experience, relevant certifications, and location.

About Aquent Talent:

Aquent Talent connects the best talent in marketing, creative, and design with the world's biggest brands.

Our eligible talent get access to amazing benefits like subsidized health, vision, and dental plans, paid sick leave, and retirement plans with a match. We also offer free online training through Aquent Gymnasium. More information on our awesome benefits!

Aquent is an equal-opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics. We're about creating an inclusive environment-one where different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives are valued, and everyone can contribute, grow their careers, and thrive.

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