Technical Product Owner

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.

At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived.

We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.

We’re hiring a Technical Product Owner to drive AI-enabled capabilities and use case delivery within our internal, enterprise platform. You will translate strategic objectives into prioritized work, coordinate delivery across cross-functional teams, and ensure successful change management across business units.

Key Responsibilities:
• Act as a Technical Product Owner (TPO) for the India platform support and use case delivery squad, working primarily with internal business stakeholders.
• Operate as an extension of the U.S.A. platform and use case delivery teams, ensuring alignment on priorities, ways of working, and release timelines.
• Own and refine the use case backlog for the India squad (not the overall product backlog), ensuring all work aligns to business goals, priorities, and direction set by US leadership.
• Lead requirements gathering, refinement, and prioritization with internal customers; translate needs into clear epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Serve as the Scrum Master for the India squad:
o Facilitate daily stand-ups, sprint planning, backlog refinement, reviews, and retrospectives.
o Remove impediments and drive continuous improvement in team execution and quality.
• Collaborate closely with the U.S.A. POs and Scrum Master to ensure continuity across squads, coordinate cross-team planning, and make sure defects and bugs are not dropped between teams.
• Identify platform changes or enhancements required to deliver internal use cases; clearly document, justify, and communicate these needs back to the U.S.A. platform squad.
• Work with the U.S.A. platform squad to sequence platform work into their roadmap and sprint plans, balancing use case delivery timelines with platform health and technical constraints.
• Ensure the India squad’s delivery aligns with platform standards (architecture, security, compliance, observability) defined by the global platform team.
• Partner with internal customers and analysts to support test planning, UAT, and post-deployment validation, ensuring solutions meet business needs and operate as expected.
• Track and communicate team metrics (e.g., velocity, throughput, defect rates) and provide regular status updates to US counterparts and leadership.
• Drive clear, timely communication across India and US teams, ensuring shared understanding of scope, dependencies, risks, and decisions.

Qualifications:
• 8+ years of experience in software delivery, with at least 3–5 years in roles such as Product Owner, Business Analyst, or Scrum Master.
• Proven experience delivering internal IT or data/analytics use cases with cross-functional business stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of Agile/Scrum principles and practices; Certified Scrum Master (CSM) or equivalent preferred.
• Demonstrated experience owning and managing a squad-level backlog: writing user stories, defining acceptance criteria, and partnering with engineers to deliver increments.
• Experience acting as a bridge between business teams and platform/engineering teams, including communicating platform needs, constraints, and trade-offs.
• Strong facilitation and communication skills across time zones and cultures; able to synthesize input from multiple stakeholders into clear direction for the team.
• Ability to coordinate work and defects across multiple squads, ensuring accountability and follow-through so issues are not lost between teams.

Why AHEAD:

Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between.

We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning.

India Employment Benefits include:
Comprehensive health insurance coverage for employees, with options to extend coverage to dependents
Paid time off and company holidays, along with additional leave benefits as per policy
Flexible work arrangements, supporting work-life balance
Learning and development opportunities to support continuous growth and upskilling
Employee wellness initiatives and programs focused on physical and mental well-being
Retirement and statutory benefits in line with India regulations
Inclusive and people-first culture, with a strong focus on collaboration and ownership