Senior Product Owner

CLA is a top 10 national professional services firm where our purpose is to create opportunities every day, for our clients, our people, and our communities through industry-focused wealth advisory, digital, audit, tax, consulting, and outsourcing services. Even with more than 8,500 people, 130 U.S. locations, and a global reach, we promise to know you and help you.

CLA is dedicated to building a culture that invites different beliefs and perspectives to the table, so we can truly know and help our clients, communities, and each other.

Our Perks:

• Flexible PTO (designed to offer flexible time away for you!)

• Up to 12 weeks paid parental leave

• Paid Volunteer Time Off

• Mental health coverage

• Quarterly Wellness stipend

• Fertility benefits

• Complete list of benefits here

CLA is growing and seeking to hire an experienced Senior Product Owner to join our talented Information Technology team. The position offers growth, flexibility and a collaborative work environment.

In this position you should have the following; excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate at all levels. Strong problem solving and creative skills and the ability to exercise sound judgment. Most important, demonstrate a high level of integrity and dependability with a strong sense of urgency and results-orientation.

The Sr. Product Owner drives business value through outcome-focused product strategy and delivery, harnessing business and technical fluency, strategic vision, customer-centricity, and stakeholder engagement to achieve product success in an Agile environment. The role covers full-stack product ownership, integrating discovery, delivery, and operational execution with technical depth and end-to-end accountability. It embodies strategic product leadership-driving product vision through foresight, data-informed decision-making, and deep collaboration with architecture, engineering, UX, product research, QA, and business stakeholders. The role balances short-term goals with long-term vision and make strategic decisions that will benefit the product and CLA. As a versatile functional leader, the Sr. Product Owner bridges gaps between stakeholders, technical teams, and users to deliver measurable outcomes. The role oversees the full product lifecycle-from ideation through post-launch iteration-including operational readiness, monitoring, and long-term sustainability. The Sr. Product Owner mentors and partners with other Product Owners and ensures alignment with CLA's solutions portfolio strategy.

How you'll create opportunities in this Senior Product Owner role:

Continuous Discovery

• Define outcome-driven product vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned to firm and service line priorities.

• Collaborate with business owners, sponsors, and product and technology leaders to shape and deliver OKRs and KPIs with measurable impact throughout the product lifecycle.

• Lead discovery using both qualitative and quantitative research to validate user problems, uncover friction points, and identify scalable opportunities.

• Translate insights into actionable hypotheses and backlog items; ensure technical feasibility and alignment with business outcomes.

• Maintain a dual-track backlog (discovery and delivery); continuously synthesize feedback into iterative improvements.

• Communicate product vision, direction, and priorities with executive-level clarity to secure alignment and buy-in.

Requirements/Backlog Management

• Develop product functional and non-functional requirements (PRD), process flows, prototypes, concept sketches, and technical enabler documentation in partnership with cross-functional teams, ensuring alignment with strategic OKRs and KPIs.

• Responsible for defining the "why," "who," and the "what."

• Own and prioritize the backlog using value-based frameworks (MoSCoW, WSJF, RICE, KANO,) to balance time-to-market, return on investment (ROI), scalability, and technical debt.

• Decompose product vision into epics, features, and user stories with acceptance criteria, dependencies covering both functional and non-functional requirements (e.g., scalability, auditability, security).

• Define instrumentation and telemetry needs to support usage tracking, product analytics, and performance measurement against OKRs/KPIs.

• Synthesize user feedback, behavioral data, and strategic inputs into actionable backlog items that drive iterative delivery and align with business, technical, and compliance objectives.

• Ensure all work meets Definition of Ready and Done; maintain backlog hygiene for sprint and PI planning.

• Partner with QA to develop test scenarios, acceptance criteria, and edge-case handling aligned with audit and compliance needs.

• Manage risks, dependencies, and assumptions using structured tools such as risk logs and dependency maps.

Technical & Solution Alignment

• Translate business problems into technical opportunities with an understanding of data schemas, integration models, APIs, SDKs, and ingestion workflows.

• Ensure solutions are extensible, auditable, and resilient-anticipating downstream needs such as edge-case logic, audit trail requirements, and platform reuse.

• Collaborate with engineering and architecture during solution design to ensure technical enablers support modular integration patterns (e.g., APIs, SDKs), platform extensibility, and architectural runway.

• Balance delivery velocity with long-term maintainability through effective collaboration on tradeoffs and design choices.

Continuous Delivery and Execution

• Lead end-to-end delivery across the product lifecycle-from idea validation through post-launch iteration, ensuring scalable, high-quality solutions meet strategic goals.

• Ensure operational handoff, system reliability, and sustainability post-launch, including documentation, support readiness, and monitoring requirements.

• Facilitate Agile delivery, including PI Planning, sprint planning, demos, retrospectives, and Inspect & Adapt sessions.

• Define delivery milestones and success criteria in collaboration with Scrum Masters, Release Train Engineers (RTE), and program/project managers.

• Monitor progress, unblock delivery teams, and ensure accountability to OKRs and timelines. Stakeholder Collaboration and Cross-Functional Influence

• Serve as a bridge between business sponsors, business owners, product and technology leaders, end users, and delivery teams.

• Drive strategic alignment across teams; manage conflicting priorities and secure buy-in for product decisions at all levels.

• Influence high-stakes decisions using structured rationale and outcome-based reasoning.

• Communicate progress, risks, and tradeoffs transparently to maintain stakeholder trust. * Foster a culture of agility, experimentation, and continuous learning-reinforcing full-stack product ownership and thinking across functions.

• Exemplify systems thinking, audit integrity, and long-term platform value in all phases of development.

Functional Leadership and Mentorship

• Serve as a versatile functional leader, bridging gaps between stakeholders, technical teams, and users to drive outcome-focused value.

• Mentor Product Owners (if applicable) on backlog quality, strategic prioritization, and cross-functional delivery alignment.

• Lead by example in outcome accountability, stakeholder management, and cross-team collaboration.

• Champion clarity, autonomy, and measurable value delivery in cross-functional teams. * Represent product excellence, ensuring product teams are effective and outcome driven. Performance Optimization and Improvement

• Define, track, and analyze product performance against key results; use insights to inform iteration and roadmap evolution.

• Investigate performance gaps, synthesize feedback, and prioritize refinements that improve user experience, system quality, and business outcomes.

• Lead post-launch optimization efforts and operationalize continuous learning across the product lifecycle.

What you will need:

• 4+ years of experience in product management, with a proven track record of successful product delivery is required.

• Bachelor's degree or a combination of relevant experience and training may be considered in lieu of a degree.

Certifications / Licenses

• SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (PO/PM) or Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) is preferred.

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Wellness at CLA

To support our CLA family members, we focus on their physical, financial, social, and emotional well-being and offer comprehensive benefit options that include health, dental, vision, 401k and much more.

To view a complete list of benefits click here.