Product Owner- Route and Territory Optimization

Job title: Product Owner- Route and Territory Optimization
Duration: 1 year contract to potential hire
Location: Charlotte, NC (Hybrid Tuesday - Thursday)

JOB SUMMARY:

Our direct customer, a global Fortune 500 company & a leader in the Food Services industry is looking for a Product Owner, delivering innovative unattended retail solutions for clients and consumers across the US. The Product Owner is responsible for the product backlog and delivery for our Route and Territory Optimization team, which currently includes workstreams for territory planning, route execution, and electronic locks. This role partners with Product Management, Operations, and stakeholders to translate business needs and operational processes into clear, scalable product capabilities and technically actionable requirements. The Product Owner complements business stakeholders by ensuring system alignment, data integrity, and high-quality delivery through agile execution, testing, and release coordination, while helping ensure the solutions we implement drive measurable business outcomes such as route efficiency, mileage reduction, and operational performance.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

·   Facilitate and Align: Build understanding of a complex business environment and facilitate decisions across user groups. Serve as the primary liaison between engineering teams, operations stakeholders, SaaS partners, and leadership. Manage cross-team dependencies and communicate progress, risks, and decisions clearly and consistently.

·   Partner on Strategy: Collaborate with the Product Manager to shape product priorities, contribute to the roadmap, and ensure backlog work aligns with product strategy and business outcomes.

·   Define Requirements and Specifications: Lead discovery and requirements elicitation. Translate operational processes and business requirements into scalable system capabilities, workflows, and product requirements. Produce and maintain backlog items with acceptance criteria and specifications such as process flows, data mappings, API/interface definitions, and event/message contracts.

·   Own Backlog and Agile Delivery: Own and continuously refine the Route and Territory Optimization backlog, prioritizing value and sequencing. Translate operational and business requirements into product logic, workflows, and decision-support capabilities related to territory design, route planning, route execution, and exception handling. Prioritize and shape backlog work to support measurable business outcomes including route efficiency, mileage reduction, service performance, and scalable field execution. Participate in agile ceremonies and day-to-day execution to drive predictable delivery across multiple concurrent efforts.

·   Drive Quality and Operational Readiness: Define and coordinate testing (functional and integration) and ensure documentation and runbooks are complete. Validate deliverables meet standards. Troubleshoot production issues and support escalations through resolution. Define non-functional requirements for systems, including security, resiliency, and observability. Ensure the data supporting Route and Territory Optimization is clean, consistent, and aligned across systems, and that the solutions that we deliver support measurable business outcomes and key performance indicators such as route efficiency, miles driven, and operational effectiveness.

·   Coordinate Releases and Change Management: Plan and coordinate releases across internal teams and external partners; align timelines, manage risks/issues, and communicate tradeoffs and status throughout delivery.

·   Manage Team Capacity: Maintain visibility of supply vs demand across internal and contracted resources and align capacity to departmental priorities and delivery commitments.

QUALIFICATIONS:

·   Education: Bachelor’s degree required; preferred fields include computer science, information technology, business administration.

·   Experience:

o Minimum of 3 years of experience in a Product Owner, Technical Product Owner, Business Analyst, Technical Analyst or similar role supporting custom application development, SaaS platforms, or enterprise business applications, demonstrating a solid foundation in analyzing and interpreting business and technical needs.

·   Analytical Skills: Knowledge of database management systems (e.g., SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and experience writing basic SQL queries (including SELECT, JOIN, WHERE clauses) in a professional setting. Ability to collect, analyze, and interpret data to make informed decisions, monitor KPI performance, and support data quality and consistency.

·   Communication Skills: Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively across business, customer, and technical audiences, and drive alignment across cross-functional teams.

·   Organizational Skills: Highly-organized and detail-oriented, with the ability to manage competing priorities and coordinate, track, and complete deliverables in a timely manner across multiple workstreams.

DESIRED SKILLS AND TRAINING:

·   Agile Methodologies: Experience with Azure DevOps, Agile methodologies, and Scrum practices to manage product backlogs, sprint planning, and delivery execution.

·   Formal Training: Formal training or certification in Business Analysis, group facilitation, or project/product management is desired.

·   Route and Territory Optimization Knowledge: Exposure to or familiarity with route planning, territory optimization, scheduling, dispatch, field service workflows, logistics, or last-mile operations is desirable.

·   Platform Experience: Experience with tools such as Descartes Roadshow, DELMIA Quintiq, Appian, or similar route optimization, planning, workflow, or decision automation platforms is a plus.

·   Optimization Concepts: Familiarity with concepts such as route balancing, service windows, territory design, capacity planning, operational constraints, and exception management is preferred.

The ideal candidate combines strong Agile product ownership skills with curiosity about operational optimization and a willingness to learn tools and workflows related to route planning, territory design, and field execution.