Senior Product Owner/Portfolio Manager - HYBRID in Des Moines, Iowa

This is a HYBRID work environment that requires you to be on-site 2-3 days a week in Des Moines, Iowa.

This is a long-term assignment with contract renewals for top performers.

American Computer Services Inc. is hiring a Senior Product Owner/Portfolio Manager to manage cross-functional teams and serve as the central point of communication for all projects under that product.

YOU MUST have:

• Proven experience coordinating with the PMO, Application Development, and other stakeholders to communicate project needs, priorities, and resource requirements.
• The ability to oversee a collection of custom applications and vendor systems, lead meetings, solve problems, facilitate and coordinate communication between the parties, manage product backlogs, document status, and ensure that the team members have the support needed to perform their work.

Your background MUST include:

• Experience in product ownership and portfolio management roles.
• Experience in Project Management, including but not limited to:
• Planning/managing scope, budget, timeline, resources; coordinating project activities.
• Documenting project plans, status updates, presentations, requirements, user stories, process maps, and instructions.
• Experience eliciting and documenting requirements and articulating requirements to both the business and technical teams.
• Experience partnering with vendor project teams, managing relationships, and vendor management.
• Experience guiding stages of agile software development, including user story development, sprint planning, and product backlog prioritization.
• Experience with IT vendor management.

As the Product Owner/Portfolio Manager, you will:

• Manage a portfolio of IT products and applications, ensuring successful completion and alignment with business needs for both internal and external users.
• Guide products through all lifecycle stages, ensuring efficiency, quality, and alignment with strategic goals.
• Work with business SMEs, internal teams, external agencies, and vendors to define product scope, identify IT-enabled solutions, and support procurement and implementation processes.
• Create and prioritize product backlogs and maintain roadmaps that align with long-term IT strategies and changing user and state needs.
• Oversee product releases, ensure readiness for deployment, monitor performance, gather feedback, and manage risks affecting delivery or budget.
• Collaborate with business and IT leadership to define and track performance metrics, ensuring all products and processes meet state, federal, and IT governance requirements.
• Manage relationships with vendors and service providers, overseeing performance, resolving issues related to interoperability, and ensuring adherence to service level agreements (SLAs) and availability targets.
• Oversee product IT financials, including budget planning and monitoring, while providing leadership with regular updates on product status, risks, and strategic roadmap progress.
• Lead and manage cross-functional fusion teams, ensuring effective collaboration among IT, vendors, and business units to deliver solutions that align with business needs and budget constraints.
• Partner with DoIT supervisors to allocate appropriate technical resources, monitor team performance, and provide ongoing support to fusion team staff.
• Facilitate agile meetings and lead sprint reviews, user story development, ensuring team alignment on priorities, and presenting outputs to stakeholders.
• Use feedback and metrics to identify product needs and collaborate on acceptance criteria, testing, and feature delivery.
• Collaborate with Executive Technology Officers (ETOs) and product teams to prioritize and manage product development efforts, ensuring alignment with agency needs and effectively transitioning products to enterprise services.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with client/business teams, establishing regular communication and fostering trust to ensure successful collaboration and issue resolution.

Additional Experience includes:

• Managing client expectations and implementing service improvement initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple parallel work efforts.
• Tracking project progress, monitoring and modifying project schedules, and providing status updates to the project team.
• Effectively escalating issues to management and/or appropriate leadership as appropriate.
• Confidence in presenting insight and knowledge towards improving portfolio, project, and program management processes.

Skills include:

• Excellent organizational, presentation, interpersonal, and team-building abilities.
• Excellent time management and project planning/strategizing.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.

Education/Certifications:

• Bachelor s degree in an IT Management-related program.