Bilingual Software Product Owner

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Canada.

📋 Description

• Oversee a multifaceted backlog for a sizable team, ensuring it aligns with product strategy, technical roadmap, and business goals.

• Convert business requirements, customer insights, and product priorities into well-defined user stories, acceptance criteria, and backlog entries.

• Establish sprint goals and assist the team in delivering progress throughout each iteration.

• Actively engage in SAFe/Agile ceremonies, including cycle and iteration planning, backlog refinement, demonstrations, and inspect/adapt sessions.

• Collaborate closely with another SPO to share vision, decisions, and accountability, ensuring well-defined roles and positive synergy.

• Facilitate collaboration across functions by coordinating business analysts, developers, and QA testers towards a unified goal.

• Maintain backlog clarity and readiness, ensuring items are well understood, appropriately sized, sequenced, and prepared for delivery in small, manageable increments.

• Make well-informed decisions and provide clear priorities to the development team.

• Navigate technical debt while fostering innovation, balancing refactoring needs with new feature requests.

• Support alignment of expectations concerning testing, quality, usability, and delivery across various teams.

• Ensure quality validation and delivery by confirming that work meets acceptance criteria and customer expectations.

• Prepare the team for the future by documenting processes, training talent, and establishing a foundation for progressive autonomy.

• Identify and address risks, dependencies, and blockers through collaboration with stakeholders.

• Encourage continuous improvement and contribute to the Agile maturity of the team.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proficiency in both French and English, in both oral and written forms.

• A minimum of 3 years of experience in a software product owner, Scrum Master, or similar Agile role.

• Proven experience managing extensive backlogs (50+ items) or leading multiple Agile teams.

• Experience in managing and prioritizing a team backlog using tools like Jira, Azure DevOps, or similar.

• Participation in PI planning or comparable cross-team planning activities is required.

• Interest or experience in actuarial science, pension plans, insurance, or financial services — OR a strong capacity for rapid learning in a complex, specialized technical domain.

• Solid understanding of Agile delivery practices.

• Good grasp of the software development lifecycle, quality practices, and product delivery processes.

• Ability to convert customer needs into clear user stories and acceptance criteria.

• Capability to balance business value, technical feasibility, risk, and delivery capacity when prioritizing tasks.

• Skill in clearly linking business objectives to backlog priorities.

• Demonstrated learning capability: You display curiosity and learn swiftly while valuing the expertise of your colleagues.

• Effective communication: You engage stakeholders (business teams, Dev, QA, UX) with clarity.

• Facilitation and alignment: You foster consensus among diverse perspectives and encourage team contributions to decision-making.

• Co-leadership collaboration: You are adept at working in tandem, sharing vision, decisions, and responsibilities without friction or ambiguity in roles.

• Strong product ownership: You show accountability for quality, customer value, and outcomes.

• Complexity management: You possess a natural ability to organize and structure a large group (20+ people) with clarity and rigor.

🏝️ Benefits

• We cultivate a culture of innovation that empowers team members to tackle complex issues and achieve remarkable human outcomes in a digital landscape.

• We provide accommodations for applicants with disabilities, as necessary, during the recruitment process.