Product Owner (cur_88_35@curatelyai.net )

Job Description

Job Description

"All candidates must be directly contracted by ASK Consulting on their payroll and cannot be subcontracted. We are unable to provide sponsorship at this moment".

Job Title: Product Owner

Location: Overland Park, KS 66211 Hybrid 2days/week Onsite

Duration: 6+ Months Contract

Pay Rate:$65.21/hr on W2

Job Description:

• Client is seeking a Product Owner to support our Developer Platform team on a 6-month contract engagement.
• This is a technical, execution-focused role centered on two core workstreams:
• 1. evening infrastructure that enables third-party partners and internal teams to subscribe to and consume platform events, and
• 2 API governance and pull request (PR) review processes that maintain code quality, standards compliance, and integration consistency across the enterprise.
• This contractor will embed within existing delivery teams, contribute to active backlogs, and serve as a connective layer between engineering, architecture, and external partner teams.
• The right candidate brings technical fluency, a bias toward execution, and hands-on experience in event-driven systems and API lifecycle management.

Key Responsibilities:

• External Eventing & 3rd Party Integration
• Own the product backlog for external eventing capabilities, including event schema design, partner subscription management, and delivery reliability standards.
• Define and refine requirements for third-party event consumers including webhook delivery, retry logic, filtering, and authentication patterns.
• Collaborate with architecture and engineering to ensure event contracts are versioned, documented, and backward-compatible.
• Engage with external partner teams to understand integration needs and translate them into well-scoped platform requirements.
• Maintain event catalog documentation and partner-facing integration guides.

API Governance & PR Review Process:

• Support API governance processes across delivery teams, including review of new API designs for standards compliance (naming conventions, versioning, error handling, security patterns).
• Own or contribute to the PR review workflow for platform integrations coordinating review cadences, defining acceptance criteria for integration PRs, and tracking resolution of flagged issues.
• Partner with engineering leads to define and evolve API design standards, Open API spec requirements, and integration testing gates.
• Identify recurring patterns in PR feedback and translate them into reusable guidelines, templates, or backlog items for standards improvement.
• Ensure cross-team PRs that touch shared platform components follow established branching, review, and merge protocols.

Delivery & Agile Execution:

• Maintain a groomed, prioritized backlog across both workstreams; write clear user stories with well-defined acceptance criteria.
• Participate in planning, ceremonies, and cross-team dependency coordination.
• Provide just-in-time story elaboration and unblock engineering teams during active sprints.
• Communicate progress, risks, and blockers to delivery stream leadership on a regular cadence.

Required Qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Product Specialist, Product Analyst, Technical Business Analyst, or similar role ideally with exposure to platform, API, or integration products.
• Demonstrated experience working on technically complex products requiring close collaboration with engineering and architecture teams.
• Ability to read and interpret API specs, event schemas, and technical documentation; comfortable in engineering-heavy environments.
• Strong backlog management skills able to write precise, implementation-ready stories and acceptance criteria without heavy PM oversight.
• Experience participating in or facilitating PR review processes or API governance programs.
• Excellent written communication skills; able to produce clear partner-facing documentation and internal technical specs.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have:

• Hands-on experience with event-driven architecture patterns Kafka, webhooks, pub/sub, event sourcing.
• Familiarity with API design standards and tooling OpenAPI/Swagger specs, Postman, API gateways (Apigee, Kong, or similar).
• Experience with GitHub-based PR workflows, branch protection rules, and CI/CD pipeline integration.
• Background in automotive, SaaS platform, or marketplace technology environments.
• Familiarity with partner/developer portal products or external developer experience programs.
• SAFe Agile experience preferred; ability to operate within an established release train.

Core Competencies:

• Technical Fluency Comfortable operating in engineering-led environments.
• Can engage meaningfully on event schema design, API contract decisions, and PR feedback without needing translation from the team.

Execution Focus Bias toward getting things done.

• Manages backlog with discipline, minimizes ceremony, and keeps teams unblocked.
• Thrives in a contractor context where outcomes matter more than process.

Governance

• Mindset Understands why standards exist and can advocate for them without being rigid.
• Finds pragmatic paths to compliance that don't slow teams down unnecessarily.
• Partner Orientation Communicates clearly with stakeholders.
• Can translate technical platform constraints into partner-friendly language and vice versa.

About ASK: ASK Consulting is an award-winning technology and professional services recruiting firm servicing Fortune 500 organizations nationally. With 5 nationwide offices, two global delivery centers, and employees in 42 states-ASK Consulting connects people with amazing opportunities

ASK Consulting is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all associates.