Product Owner 2 - Test & Quality Engineering

Role: Product Owner 2 – Test & Quality Engineering
Location: Chicago, IL (Hyb - 2 days)

Let’s create our future together at The AES Group!

About The AES Group
The AES Group is a premier technology and engineering consulting company that has been bringing businesses and talent together for over 20 years to deliver innovative solutions that have the greatest positive impact on society. AES has helped over 40 business enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies, engage their customers, empower their employees, and transform their business operations with the power of cloud, data, AI, engineering, and other emerging technologies.

Position Overview

Our Client is seeking a Product Owner 2 to support its Test and Quality Engineering organization. The Product Owner will drive the vision, roadmap, prioritization, and delivery of testing capabilities, quality tools, and QA process improvements across the engineering organization.

This role will work closely with QA Engineers, Software Developers, DevOps Engineers, Release teams, and business stakeholders to improve test automation, quality processes, CI/CD workflows, and overall software delivery.

The ideal candidate has experience working with software testing teams, strong Agile/Scrum product ownership skills, and a working understanding of DevOps, CI/CD, test automation, and software quality processes.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and manage the product backlog for test tools, frameworks, and quality initiatives.
• Define and prioritize features related to test automation, test data management, environment stability, and quality reporting.
• Gather and analyze requirements from QA, Engineering, DevOps, Release, and business stakeholders.
• Translate business and technical requirements into clear user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Partner with QA, Development, and DevOps teams to improve quality practices throughout the SDLC.
• Drive continuous improvements in test processes, automation coverage, and release confidence.
• Participate in sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Track and communicate key quality metrics, including:
  • Test coverage
  • Automation success rate
  • Defect leakage
  • Release readiness
  • Test execution reliability
• Help coordinate test environments and understand dependencies within CI/CD workflows.
• Support prioritization of issues involving build pipelines, test execution, environments, and deployment readiness.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for testing-related product decisions and roadmap alignment.
• Identify risks, dependencies, and blockers and work with cross-functional teams to resolve them.

Required Qualifications

Education & Experience

• 2–4 years of experience as a Product Owner or in a similar software delivery role.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
• Experience working as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, QA Lead, or similar role within a software development environment.

Required Technical Skills

• Strong understanding of software testing concepts, including:
  • Functional testing
  • Regression testing
  • Integration testing
  • Automated testing
• Hands-on experience working in Agile/Scrum environments.
• Experience with product backlog management and prioritization.
• Ability to create clear user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Experience with test management and defect tracking tools, such as:
  • Jira
  • Azure DevOps
  • TestRail
  • Similar tools
• Understanding of software development and QA processes across the SDLC.

Preferred Qualifications

• Basic knowledge of DevOps practices and tools.
• Understanding of CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or similar platforms.
• Familiarity with Git/source control.
• Understanding of environment management, deployment workflows, and release coordination.
• Exposure to test automation tools such as:
  • Selenium
  • Cypress
  • Playwright
  • Postman
  • API automation frameworks
• Experience with quality dashboards, reporting, and release metrics.
• Understanding of quality gates and release management.
• Experience working in enterprise, regulated, or fast-paced software delivery environments.