Search Product Owner- Springfield
Photon · United States · $52,000 (stated in the posting)
Job Title: Discovery Product Manager
Product Owner — Search
B2B Automotive Parts Platform
Role Overview
We are seeking an experienced Product Owner to support the delivery of search and catalog discovery capabilities on a B2B digital platform serving professional automotive repair shops and commercial buyers. This is an execution-focused role that sits within the delivery team, partnering with the Discovery PM, engineering architects, and internal product and QA teams to translate roadmap intent into sprint-ready stories, manage the backlog, and ensure high-quality delivery.
The Search PO is the day-to-day delivery anchor for the search and catalog workstream — owning backlog hygiene, story quality, sprint readiness, and stakeholder coordination at the feature level. The ideal candidate is a disciplined, detail-oriented PO who can bridge product intent and engineering execution in a fast-paced Agile environment.
Key Responsibilities
Backlog & Story Ownership
- Own and manage the sprint backlog for the search and catalog discovery workstream — covering parts search, vehicle selection, catalog lookup, product listing pages, product detail pages, pricing and availability, part interchange, kits, and stock order workflows.
- Break epics and features into well-structured, sprint-ready user stories with clear acceptance criteria, edge cases, and definition of ready and done.
- Facilitate backlog grooming sessions with engineering (API and frontend tracks), architects, QA, and internal stakeholders — ensuring stories are technically unambiguous before sprint entry.
- Maintain traceability from business requirements through to stories, test cases, and release notes.
- Keep the backlog current, prioritized, and aligned to the Discovery PM's roadmap direction at all times.
Delivery Execution
- Work within the team's Agile delivery model — supporting the end-to-end pipeline from story sign-off through technical design, development, integration, testing, and production release.
- Track feature progress at the task level across API build, frontend build, integration, QA, and bug-fix cycles. Escalate blockers proactively and without delay.
- Support sprint ceremonies — planning, daily standups, reviews, and retrospectives — ensuring the team maintains delivery velocity and transparency.
- Coordinate stakeholder touchpoints per feature — ensuring the right reviewers and approvers are engaged at the right stages of the delivery pipeline.
- Manage JIRA as the single source of truth — story status, acceptance criteria, defect linkage, and release tracking.
- Search & Catalog Domain Execution
- Translate Discovery PM direction into executable delivery items across search and catalog features — parts search, vehicle-based lookup, catalog enrichment, PLP and PDP attributes, pricing and availability, part interchange, kits, and stock order initiation.
- Validate acceptance criteria against professional buyer workflows — ensuring stories correctly reflect shop, vehicle, fitment, pricing, and ordering scenarios.
- Support data model design reviews and API specification walkthroughs as part of the technical design gate process.
- Work with the search platform team to define and validate relevance, ranking, and catalog quality requirements at the story level.
Quality & Release Readiness
- Coordinate UAT preparation — test data setup, test case review, and defect triage.
- Ensure each feature meets integration and end-to-end gate requirements before advancing to regression and user acceptance testing.
- Partner with QA to define test scenarios that cover edge cases, fitment logic, pricing rules, and catalog data quality.
- Support post-launch monitoring — tracking defect resolution, feature adoption, and catalog quality metrics in the immediate post-release window.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of Product Owner or Business Analyst experience in e-commerce, enterprise SaaS, or digital platform delivery.
- Hands-on experience writing user stories and acceptance criteria (BDD format) for complex, API-integrated product features in JIRA and Confluence.
- Strong understanding of product listing and detail page experiences — attribute management, pricing display, availability logic, and catalog data requirements.
- Experience in Agile/Scrum environments — sprint planning, grooming, standups, reviews, and retrospectives.
- Ability to collaborate directly with API and frontend engineering teams on technical requirements, integration specifications, and defect resolution.
- Strong attention to detail — ability to manage large backlogs across multiple epics concurrently without losing story quality or prioritization clarity.
- Excellent communication skills — able to manage stakeholder expectations, surface blockers clearly, and keep delivery moving.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in B2B e-commerce, automotive aftermarket, parts commerce, or procurement platforms — familiarity with vehicle selection, fitment logic, part interchange, catalog complexity, and B2B buyer workflows is a strong plus.
- Working knowledge of search and catalog platforms (Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, or similar) — understanding of indexing, relevance tuning, faceted search, and query pipelines from a product and delivery perspective.
- Familiarity with pricing and availability services in a commerce context — real-time P&A integration, tiered pricing, and inventory visibility.
- Experience with headless commerce, MFE (Micro Frontend) architectures, and API-first platform delivery.
- Exposure to cloud-based platform infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and release management tooling.
- Experience coordinating analytics instrumentation and working with QA and data teams on test coverage and product dashboards.
- CSPO, PSPO, SAFe PO/PM, or equivalent Agile certification.
Core Skills
- Product Backlog Management & Story Writing
- Acceptance Criteria Definition (BDD Format)
- Search & Catalog Delivery Coordination
- Vehicle-Based Navigation & Fitment Requirements
- Pricing & Availability Story Definition
- Part Interchange & Kits Delivery
- Sprint Planning & Agile Ceremonies
- JIRA Backlog & Release Tracking
- API & Frontend Delivery Coordination
- UAT Coordination & Defect Triage
- Stakeholder Communication & Escalation
- Cross-functional Delivery Execution
Compensation, Benefits and Duration
- Minimum Compensation: USD 52,000
- Maximum Compensation: USD 182,000
- Compensation is based on actual experience and qualifications of the candidate. The above is a reasonable and a good faith estimate for the role.
- Medical, vision, and dental benefits, 401k retirement plan, variable pay/incentives, paid time off, and paid holidays are available for full-time employees.
- This position is available for independent contractors
- No applications will be considered if received more than 120 days after the date of this post