Senior Technology Product Manager

AI Senior Technology Product Manager – Firm Management (Professional)

The Wolters Kluwer Firm Management Product Management team is seeking an experienced and motivated Technical Product Manager to set the direction and define the requirements for our portfolio. This is a unique opportunity for someone who is passionate about solving problems to shape the future of our Firm Management Solutions business.

The right candidate will possess a strong product management background and have experience in software development processes and in AI technology. The successful individual in this role will understand how software engineers use IDEs to write code and will be able to engage them as customers and users. In addition, you will work with development and product management leaders to maintain a consistent rhythm of planning, execution, and review to ensure that Product Management and Development work as one team. You must be able to thrive and succeed in an entrepreneurial environment, and not be hindered by ambiguity or competing priorities. This means anticipating bottlenecks, making tradeoffs, and balancing the needs of the business versus technical constraints. Cross-team coordination, project management and an ability to learn and understand innovative technologies are essential.

A day in the life:

• Work backward from the internal customer to understand the user problems and build a compelling strategy and backlog.
• Champion the needs of the direct and indirect users of the products and tools delivered by the team.
• Prioritize, define, and refine deliverables based on business and internal user impact.
• Manage product backlog and planning.
• Partner with development to deliver new services and features.
• Communicate product updates through narratives and reporting.

Job Responsibilities:

• Proactively seeks detailed understanding of vision, and near-term and long-term priorities for the product portfolio they support, including target customer segment(s), focus areas for solution portfolio, success criteria and goals, etc.
• Facilitates customer interactions, in partnership with user experience team, to understand their unmet needs and test concepts and solutions throughout the development process.
• Gathers functional and non-functional requirements from product line managers, customers and internal stakeholders, including, marketing, sales, implementation, training and support teams.
• Translates functional and non-functional requirements into feature and user stories.
• Represents the voice of customers and internal stakeholders to user experience and development teams throughout the solution development process.
• Documents user acceptance criteria for all functional and non-functional requirements.
• Presents and explains the feature and user stories to the development team throughout the development process in all forums associated with Agile process.
• Facilitates quarterly development planning process (e.g., Agile Big Room Planning).
• Partners with the development team to strike the right balance of scope, schedule and resources to maximize progress towards their portfolio goals.
• Plans for the year, to ensure that the development team will have the written technical features and stories on time and prioritize development of those appropriately along with other user stories for the upcoming quarters.
• Partners with program/project manager to develop detailed project plans and closely track performance against those plans; convey progress, any deviations and impacts of those deviations to product line managers in a timely fashion.
• Sets iteration themes and assigns prioritized user stories from the product backlog to the Scrum teams; participates in team planning meetings, and provides advice, clarification and guidance during the execution of each sprint.
• Inspects, and accepts or rejects completed work for the development sprint, and ensures new functionality meets the acceptance criteria.
• Ensures the product backlog is constantly prioritized to secure delivery of maximum business value.
• In partnership with project/program manager, partners with other technical product managers to manage dependencies and sets priorities across multiple teams.
• Develops and deepens subject matter expertise in relevant product domains, including features and functionality.
• Socializes progress and seeks inputs throughout the development process from all stakeholders, including, product line managers, marketing, sales, implementation, training and support teams.

Job Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university, or equivalent experience.
• Three or more years’ experience with tax & accounting firm management software in one of these areas required – 1) product management, 2) consulting, 3) professional experience in CPA firm.
• Three or more years with Agile Scrum methodologies as a product owner/technical product manager preferred.
• Three or more years in product management of B2B enterprise SaaS software products preferred.
• Experience with AI technology preferred.

Other Knowledge, Skills, Abilities or Certifications:

• Experience driving all aspects of the software development lifecycle with development teams - iteration themes, backlog grooming, story mapping, user story creation and decomposition, retrospectives, etc.
• Experience participating in or leading the product design process with user experience team and product architects.
• Experience leading customer interviews, concept testing and usability testing.
• Time management and project management.
• Proficiency in translating business requirements into technical requirements.
• Defining acceptance criteria for functional and non-functional requirements.
• Negotiation.
• Process orientation and data analysis.
• Breaking down complex ideas into simple concepts.
• Influencing.
• Adaptability.
• Aligning deliverables with strategy and priority.
• Focus on solutions and possibilities.
• Nimble, quick to respond or adjust.
• Disciplined professional who holds themselves and others accountable.
• Collaboration.
• Meeting facilitation and presentation.