Product Owner/Portfolio Manager

Location: Grand Des Moines, Iowa, USA

Duration: 9 Months (Hybrid)

Visa Status: USC, GC, GCEAD, H1B, C2C

Job Description:

Key Responsibilities:

· Manage a portfolio of IT products and applications, ensuring successful completion and alignment with business needs for both internal and external users.

· Serve as a Product Owner to guide products through all lifecycle stages, ensuring efficiency, quality, and alignment with strategic goals.

· Work with business SMEs, internal teams, external agencies, and vendors to define product scope, identify IT-enabled solutions, and support procurement and implementation processes.

· Create and prioritize product backlogs and maintain roadmaps that align with long-term IT strategies and changing user and state needs.

· Oversee product releases, ensure readiness for deployment, monitor performance, gather feedback, and manage risks affecting delivery or budget.

· Collaborate with business and IT leadership to define and track performance metrics, ensuring all products and processes meet state, federal, and IT governance requirements.

· Manage relationships with vendors and service providers, overseeing performance, resolving issues related to interoperability, and ensuring adherence to service level agreements (SLAs) and availability targets.

· Oversee product IT financials, including budget planning and monitoring, while providing leadership with regular updates on product status, risks, and strategic roadmap progress.

· Lead and manage cross-functional fusion teams, ensuring effective collaboration among IT, vendors, and business units to deliver solutions that align with business needs and budget constraints.

· Partner with DoIT supervisors to allocate appropriate technical resources, monitor team performance, and provide ongoing support to fusion team staff.

· Facilitate agile meetings and lead sprint reviews, user story development, ensuring team alignment on priorities and presenting outputs to stakeholders.

· Use feedback and metrics to identify product needs and collaborate on acceptance criteria, testing, and feature delivery.

· Collaborate with Executive Technology Officers (ETOs) and product teams to prioritize and manage product development efforts, ensuring alignment with agency needs and effectively transitioning products to enterprise services.

· Build and maintain strong relationships with client/business teams, establishing regular communication and fostering trust to ensure successful collaboration and issue resolution.



Required Skills

· Product ownership, portfolio management (2+ years)

· Project management: planning/managing scope, budget, timeline, resources; coordinating project activities (5+ years)

· Requirement elicitation, documentation and articulation between teams (5+ years)

· Proficient understanding of the software development life cycle and related methodologies (5+ years)

· Experience partnering with vendor project teams, managing relationships and vendor management (5+ years)

· High quality documentation: project plans, status updates, presentations, requirements, user stories, process maps, instructions (5+ years)

· Demonstrated strong communication skills across technical teams and business stakeholders, specifically to leadership - setting/resetting expectations (5+ years)

· Guide stages of agile software development, including user story development, sprint planning, and prioritization of the product backlog. (3+) years

· IT vendor management (3+ years)


Required 2 Years Product ownership, portfolio management
Required 5 Years Project management: planning/managing scope, budget, timeline, resources; coordinating project activities
Required 5 Years Requirement elicitation, documentation and articulation between teams
Required 5 Years Proficient understanding of the software development lifecycle and related methodologies
Required 5 Years Experience partnering with vendor project teams, managing relationships and vendor management
Required 5 Years High quality documentation: project plans, status updates, presentations, requirements, user stories, process maps, instructions
Required 5 Years Demonstrated strong communication skills across technical teams and business stakeholders, specifically to leadership - setting/resetting expectations
Required 3 Years Guide stages of agile software development, including user story development, sprint planning, and prioritization of the product backlog
Required 3 Years IT vendor management