Product Owner – Agile Delivery, Product Vision & Cross-Functional Stakeholder Management
Synechron · Chennai
Job Summary
Synechron is seeking a Product Owner with 7–12 years of experience to define and communicate product vision and strategy in alignment with business goals. The role is responsible for managing the product backlog, engaging stakeholders, guiding delivery teams, and using market and customer insights to support product decisions. The Product Owner will connect business needs with engineering, design, and data science capabilities to ensure that product features are clearly defined, prioritized, and delivered effectively. The role contributes to business objectives by improving product value, supporting customer-focused outcomes, and ensuring that product development remains aligned with market needs and organizational priorities.
Software Requirements
Required
- Proficiency with at least one product backlog and work-management tool, with practical experience managing epics, features, user stories, tasks, priorities, and workflows.
- Experience using tools that support sprint planning, burndown metrics, velocity tracking, release planning, and task definition.
- Experience with collaboration and documentation tools used for requirements management, stakeholder communication, decision tracking, and product documentation.
- Experience with digital tools for analyzing user feedback, market information, product performance, or customer insights.
- Working knowledge of software development lifecycle and agile delivery tools at a level appropriate for a Product Owner with 7–12 years of experience.
- Ability to learn and use the software tools adopted by Synechron or the assigned delivery team.
Preferred
- Experience with integrated agile planning, product road-mapping, reporting, and portfolio-management platforms.
- Experience using analytics, dashboarding, experimentation, or customer-feedback tools to support product decisions.
- Experience with prototyping, wireframing, or UX collaboration tools.
- Experience with tools that support requirements traceability, release governance, and product documentation.
- Experience with automation or artificial intelligence-enabled product-management tools, where relevant to the product area.
Equivalent tools and platforms may be considered where they demonstrate the same capabilities.
Overall Responsibilities
- Articulate and champion the product vision and strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives and measurable customer outcomes.
- Translate business goals, customer needs, market information, and stakeholder input into an actionable product roadmap.
- Effectively prioritize and maintain the product backlog, focusing on the delivery of the most valuable features and improvements.
- Define clear acceptance criteria and maintain sufficient detail for the development team to estimate, plan, build, test, and release product increments.
- Craft clear and detailed user stories that communicate business value, user needs, functional expectations, dependencies, and relevant constraints.
- Engage with stakeholders across the organization to gather requirements, clarify priorities, manage expectations, and ensure the product meets diverse needs.
- Lead the development team through each iteration by providing timely decisions, clarifying requirements, and ensuring that the product evolves coherently with the established vision.
- Collaborate with engineering, design, data science, quality assurance, and other cross-functional teams to launch and manage products.
- Conduct market research and monitor industry trends, customer expectations, and competitor activities to support product strategy.
- Analyze user feedback, product data, and delivery outcomes to identify opportunities for product improvement.
- Support sprint planning, reviews, demonstrations, retrospectives, release planning, and other agile activities as required.
- Maintain traceability between product objectives, backlog items, acceptance criteria, delivered outcomes, and customer value.
- Consider sustainable product and delivery practices, including efficient use of technology resources, responsible prioritization, accessibility, maintainability, and long-term product viability.
- Measure performance through relevant outcomes such as customer value, adoption, delivery predictability, product quality, stakeholder alignment, and progress against agreed objectives.
- Make prioritization and clarification decisions within the agreed product scope, escalating material risks, conflicts, dependencies, or changes in direction when appropriate.
Technical Skills (By Category)
Programming Languages
Essential
- Ability to understand technical discussions, software requirements, system behavior, dependencies, and delivery constraints sufficiently to make informed product decisions.
Preferred
- Familiarity with programming concepts or exposure to commonly used languages relevant to the product domain.
- Ability to review basic technical documentation, application flows, or implementation considerations with engineering teams.
Databases/Data Management
Essential
- Understanding of how product data, customer feedback, business metrics, and operational information support product decisions.
- Ability to define data-related requirements and collaborate with data, engineering, or analytics teams.
Preferred
- Familiarity with relational or non-relational databases and data integration concepts.
- Experience using product analytics, reporting, dashboards, or data-quality information to evaluate outcomes.
Cloud Technologies
Essential
- Working understanding of how cloud-based software delivery may affect product requirements, scalability, availability, security, cost, and release planning.
Preferred
- Experience managing or contributing to products delivered through cloud platforms.
- Familiarity with cloud-related concepts such as environments, services, APIs, monitoring, resilience, and resource efficiency.
Frameworks and Libraries
Essential
- Ability to work with engineering teams to understand the impact of frameworks, libraries, integrations, and technical dependencies on product delivery.
Preferred
- Familiarity with frameworks, APIs, integration patterns, or front-end and back-end product components relevant to the assigned product area.
Development Tools and Methodologies
Essential
- Proficiency in agile methodologies and software development cycles.
- Practical experience with backlog management, sprint planning, prioritization, estimation, burndown metrics, velocity, task definition, reviews, and release planning.
- Experience defining user stories, acceptance criteria, product requirements, and measurable outcomes.
- Experience collaborating with engineering, design, data science, quality assurance, and other cross-functional teams.
- Understanding of customer-centric product development and UX design principles.
Preferred
- Experience with Scrum, Kanban, scaled agile practices, or hybrid delivery approaches.
- Experience with product discovery, experimentation, MVP definition, roadmap planning, service design, or outcome-based planning.
- Experience using delivery metrics to identify risks, dependencies, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement.
Security Protocols
Essential
- Awareness of security, privacy, compliance, accessibility, and data-protection considerations relevant to product requirements.
- Ability to involve appropriate technical and risk stakeholders when security or privacy requirements affect product scope or delivery.
Preferred
- Experience working with products subject to regulated data, identity and access management, secure development practices, audit requirements, or formal risk controls.
- Familiarity with defining security and privacy acceptance criteria.
Experience Requirements
- 7–12 years of experience in product management, product ownership, business analysis, technology delivery, or a similar role.
- Demonstrable experience managing product lifecycles in a fast-paced, agile environment.
- Proven experience defining product vision, maintaining and prioritizing backlogs, creating user stories, and establishing acceptance criteria.
- Experience working closely with engineering, design, data science, quality assurance, and other cross-functional teams to launch and manage products.
- Experience gathering requirements and feedback from stakeholders with diverse business or customer needs.
- Experience using market research, user feedback, product data, and industry trends to adjust product strategy.
- Preferred experience within a technology-focused organization or an environment involving digital products, software platforms, data products, or technology-enabled services.
- Candidates may also qualify through equivalent combinations of product ownership, product management, business analysis, delivery leadership, domain expertise, and demonstrated product outcomes, even where their career path does not follow a traditional product title progression.
Day-to-Day Activities
- Review and update the product backlog to reflect changing priorities, dependencies, user feedback, market information, and agreed business objectives.
- Conduct stakeholder meetings and discovery discussions to collect feedback, clarify requirements, refine product features, and communicate decisions.
- Collaborate with the development team during sprint planning, reviews, demonstrations, refinement sessions, releases, and issue resolution.
- Analyze user feedback, market data, delivery metrics, and product outcomes; make decisions within product scope and escalate material risks or priority conflicts.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent relevant professional experience may be considered.
- Master’s degree in a related discipline is preferred but not required.
- Certification in product management, product ownership, agile delivery, or a related discipline is preferred; relevant demonstrated experience may be accepted in place of certification.
- Completion of role-relevant training in agile methods, product discovery, UX, stakeholder management, data-informed decision-making, security, or accessibility is preferred.
- Commitment to continuous professional development through relevant training, industry learning, practical experience, and awareness of evolving product, technology, customer, and sustainability practices.
Professional Competencies
- Apply critical thinking and structured problem-solving to evaluate product options, manage ambiguity, identify dependencies, and make evidence-based decisions.
- Provide clear direction while working effectively with engineering, design, data science, and other cross-functional teams.
- Communicate product vision, priorities, requirements, trade-offs, risks, and decisions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Adapt product plans based on customer feedback, market dynamics, delivery information, emerging technology, and changing business priorities.
- Identify opportunities for innovation and improvement while maintaining focus on customer value, usability, accessibility, security, maintainability, and sustainable outcomes.
- Manage time, priorities, dependencies, and competing stakeholder needs while maintaining attention to detail and delivery commitments.
SYNECHRON’S DIVERSITY & INCLUSION STATEMENT
Diversity & Inclusion are fundamental to our culture, and Synechron is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative ‘Same Difference’ is committed to fostering an inclusive culture – promoting equality, diversity and an environment that is respectful to all. We strongly believe that a diverse workforce helps build stronger, successful businesses as a global company. We encourage applicants from across diverse backgrounds, race, ethnicities, religion, age, marital status, gender, sexual orientations, or disabilities to apply. We empower our global workforce by offering flexible workplace arrangements, mentoring, internal mobility, learning and development programs, and more.
All employment decisions at Synechron are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to the applicant’s gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.