Hiring: Senior Technical Product Owner
Location: Washington, DC
Work Arrangement: 100% Onsite (Required from Day 1)
Contract Duration: 2 Months, with the possibility of extension
Work Schedule: 40 Hours per Week
Job Type: Contract [NO BENEFITS]
Position Overview
We are seeking an experienced Senior Technical Product Owner to define product vision, priorities, and technical requirements for a research collaboration tooling initiative.
The successful candidate will translate business and research collaboration needs into actionable technical specifications, user stories, and a prioritized product roadmap. This role involves close collaboration with DevSecOps engineering teams, platform architects, business stakeholders, and technical subject matter experts to ensure product decisions align with technical feasibility and broader platform priorities.
The ideal candidate combines strong product ownership and technical business analysis expertise with a solid understanding of source-control platforms, technical authoring tools, research collaboration solutions, and file-sharing technologies.
The candidate must be capable of evaluating integration options, identifying technical constraints, assessing architectural trade-offs, and facilitating communication between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities
1. Product Vision and Requirements Definition
- Define product vision, objectives, and priorities for research collaboration tools and technologies.
- Gather and validate requirements directly with business stakeholders, architects, and technical subject matter experts.
- Translate business needs and research collaboration requirements into clear technical specifications, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
- Prioritize product features and enhancements based on business value, technical feasibility, and stakeholder needs.
- Maintain requirements traceability from initial business requirements through technical implementation and delivery.
- Develop and maintain a prioritized product roadmap aligned with organizational and platform objectives.
2. Platform and Technical Awareness
- Maintain working knowledge of platforms used for external research collaboration, including source-control systems, developer collaboration tools, technical authoring platforms, and file-sharing solutions.
- Evaluate platform capabilities, integration options, and technical limitations to support informed product decisions.
- Collaborate with engineering teams and platform architects to assess integration approaches before finalizing technical decisions.
- Evaluate integration scenarios, including synchronization between technical authoring platforms and source-control systems.
- Assess repository structures, access controls, and permission models for external collaborators.
- Monitor developments in research collaboration technologies and recommend roadmap adjustments as needed.
3. Technical Leadership and Decision-Making
- Collaborate with engineering teams and platform architects to evaluate architectural decisions and technical trade-offs.
- Assess scalability, performance, maintainability, and integration implications of proposed product and tooling solutions.
- Support informed technology selection and integration planning based on platform capabilities and business requirements.
- Identify technical dependencies, risks, and constraints that may affect product delivery.
- Facilitate discussions between technical stakeholders to resolve open questions and support effective decision-making.
4. Cross-Functional Communication
- Serve as the primary liaison between business stakeholders and DevSecOps engineering and platform teams.
- Translate technical constraints, implementation options, trade-offs, and delivery timelines into clear language for non-technical stakeholders.
- Communicate business priorities and external collaboration requirements to engineering teams through actionable specifications.
- Facilitate discussions among business analysts, senior leadership, engineers, architects, and other stakeholders.
- Ensure alignment between stakeholder expectations, technical feasibility, and product delivery objectives.
5. Process Management and Delivery Support
- Apply project management principles, organizational skills, and process mapping techniques to manage product requirements and activities.
- Maintain accurate documentation of requirements, decisions, open questions, meeting minutes, and changes.
- Prepare and maintain decision logs and supporting product documentation.
- Support product planning, backlog prioritization, and roadmap discussions with program leadership.
- Track requirements and decisions throughout the product development lifecycle.
- Manage competing priorities across multiple stakeholders while maintaining clear communication and documentation.
Required Qualifications and Skills
- Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent professional experience.
- 10+ years of experience in product ownership, technical business analysis, or a related role.
- Experience working in platform engineering, developer tooling, technical collaboration, or similar technology environments is highly desirable.
- Proven experience defining product vision and translating stakeholder requirements into technical specifications and user stories.
- Demonstrated ability to work directly with business analysts, senior leadership, software engineers, and architects to validate requirements and assess technical feasibility.
- Working knowledge of source-control and developer collaboration platforms, such as GitHub.
- Familiarity with technical authoring and research collaboration platforms, such as Overleaf.
- Understanding of file collaboration, document sharing, and research-sharing platforms.
- Ability to evaluate platform capabilities, integration options, access models, and technical constraints.
- Strong understanding of product roadmaps, backlog prioritization, requirements traceability, and product delivery processes.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Strong analytical, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities and coordinate across diverse stakeholder groups.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, or Cursor.
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM), or an equivalent certification.
- Experience supporting research collaboration initiatives, academic partnerships, or external stakeholder engagement programs.
- Familiarity with Agile methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban.
- Previous experience supporting federal government projects or programs.
- Experience working in DevSecOps, platform engineering, or developer productivity environments.
Expected Deliverables
The selected candidate will be responsible for producing and maintaining the following deliverables:
- Product Vision and Roadmap: A clearly defined product vision, prioritized roadmap, and technical specifications for research collaboration tooling, with traceability from business requirements through technical delivery.
- Feasibility and Integration Assessments: Evaluations of technical feasibility, platform capabilities, integration approaches, dependencies, and potential constraints for research collaboration initiatives.
- Technical Decision Documentation: Documented technical recommendations, architectural considerations, trade-offs, and integration decisions developed in collaboration with engineering teams and platform architects.
- Requirements Documentation: Clear and actionable technical requirements, user stories, and supporting documentation aligned with stakeholder needs.
- Process Documentation: Meeting minutes, decision logs, open questions, requirement updates, and other documentation supporting product planning and execution.
- Stakeholder Alignment: Ongoing coordination among business stakeholders, business analysts, engineers, and platform architects to ensure alignment on requirements, priorities, and implementation approaches.
