Position: Product Data Owner (Full-Time)
Location: Ashburn, VA (Hybrid)
Position Summary:
Seeking a Product Data Owner to serve as the primary translator between Air Force business stakeholders and our software development team. Reporting to the Data and Business Analytics Lead, this is a hybrid technical product manager role: you will own requirements definition, user story development, and customer-facing engagement for a portfolio of data products supporting senior Air Force decision-makers. You will not write code or build dashboards — that work is owned by our Qlik and engineering teams. Instead, you will ensure those teams receive validated, well-scoped requirements and that our customers see themselves clearly reflected in every release.
The successful candidate will be a strong communicator with deep familiarity in how IT portfolios are managed within the Department of the Air Force, capable of running whiteboarding sessions with senior stakeholders one hour and authoring crisp user stories the next.
Key Responsibilities:
Requirements & User Story Development
• Capture business requirements from senior Air Force stakeholders and translate them into structured, development-ready user stories.
• Validate user stories with the customer to confirm alignment before engineering work begins — confirming the customer can clearly see themselves in the proposed solution.
• Maintain the requirements artifact set as the connective tissue between business intent and technical execution.
Customer Engagement & Concierge Support
• Serve as a dedicated concierge for the program’s primary client stakeholders, surfacing needs that may not emerge through standard intake channels.
• Conduct deep-dive analyses on emerging requests and connect findings back to the requirements pipeline.
• Establish and run recurring user feedback sessions to test what works, what doesn’t, and what is missing.
Functional Portfolio Coordination
• Act as the focal point for feedback from broader functional portfolio owners across the SPHERE community, beyond the three primary customers.
• Bridge functional silos by surfacing cross-portfolio dependencies and shared requirements.
• Capture latent needs from secondary user groups whose voices are not part of the regular intake cycle.
Whiteboarding & Forward Planning
• Partner with the Software Lead to frame next-phase objectives and shape the product roadmap.
• Lead working sessions to clarify business logic without prescribing technical implementation.
• Translate strategic intent into actionable development backlogs.
Required Qualifications:
• Active U.S. Secret security clearance (or higher) at time of hire.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Systems, Public Administration, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent professional experience considered.
• 5+ years of professional experience in a product management, business analyst, requirements engineering, or technical product owner capacity.
• Demonstrated ability to author user stories and structured requirements that translate cleanly into development backlogs.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with experience supporting senior government or executive-level customers.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with the ability to facilitate whiteboarding sessions and produce client-ready documentation.
• Self-directed work ethic with the ability to drive outcomes without close day-to-day supervision.
Preferred Qualifications:
• Department of the Air Force IT portfolio management experience. This is the single highest-weighted preferred qualification — direct familiarity with how the DAF plans, governs, and reports on its IT portfolio is significantly differentiating.
• Prior experience supporting AFDW, SAF/CNBB, SAF/CN, or comparable Air Force headquarters organizations.
• Familiarity with portfolio management frameworks such as PfMP, Title 10 §2222 governance, or DAFI 63-144 implementation.
• Working knowledge of data visualization platforms such as Qlik or ADVANA — sufficient to converse with developers, not to develop in them.
• Experience with Agile and SAFe methodologies (Scrum Product Owner, SAFe POPM, or equivalent certification).
• Background bridging business stakeholders and engineering teams in a federal or defense consulting environment.
What This Role Is Not:
To set clear expectations with candidates, this role is intentionally scoped away from the following:
• Software engineering or development. The Product Data Owner does not write code.
• Qlik or ADVANA development. Our existing data engineering team owns dashboard build and data modeling.
• UX or visual design. Dashboard design is handled by a separate design partner.
• Code-level technical ownership. The Software Lead retains technical leadership of the software stack.
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