Product Owner

Title: Product Owner Location: Newark, NJ Duration: 12 Months (Possibility of conversion) Description Client is building a modern data ecosystem that enables business domains to create, govern, discover, and consume trusted data products at scale. The ecosystem is continuing to evolve through the adoption of emerging capabilities across data governance, metadata management, virtualization, cataloging, and data product platforms. The Product Owner serves as the bridge between business stakeholders and the central data engineering and platform teams. This role is responsible for defining and executing the vision, strategy, and roadmap that enables trusted, scalable, and governed authorized data sources, and data products across the organization. As Product Owner, you will work closely with business leaders, data product owners, architects, engineers, governance teams, and analytics consumers to ensure the platform delivers measurable business value. You will own and prioritize the backlog for the Data Mesh ecosystem, balancing business outcomes, platform investments, technical debt, governance requirements, and user experience improvements. Key Responsibilities Set an ambitious & clear vision for your assigned Agile team; communicate that vision effectively to key stakeholders, Agile team members, and members of related teams and journeys Own the end-to-end strategy and roadmap for your assigned Agile team, and ensure alignment between roadmap and product-level Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) Continuously refine & improve team backlog; ensure all items are clearly described, estimated, prioritized, and released within milestones set by the roadmap and OKRs Execute on the vision/roadmap in partnership with the rightful data product and ADS owners. Drive adoption of data products, standards, and self-service capabilities. Collaborate with Tech Lead, Architecture, Engineering, Data governance, and business teams to deliver scalable solutions. Measure and communicate outcomes through adoption, quality, operational, and business value metrics. Qualifications Experience as a Product Owner supporting enterprise data, analytics, or platform initiatives. Strong understanding of modern data and analytics ecosystems, including data platforms, data products, governance, metadata management, and self-service analytics. Strong business knowledge of institutional retirement products is a major plus. Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills; able to work effectively & manage the needs of team members, leadership, and multiple business partners Demonstrated ability to analyze and synthesize data to illuminate key findings and areas of opportunity + summarize findings that educate key stakeholders in a way that is meaningful and compelling Excellent work ethic, with an ability to be self-motivated; able to manage changing priorities and meet aggressive deadlines Proven ability to be a "servant leader" in a non-hierarchical environment, embracing an Agile mindset that evolves with business Experience working in Agile/SAFe environments. Experience working with enterprise data platforms and modern data technologies is preferred. Prior experience with Microsoft Fabric, AWS services, Denodo, Ataccama, or similar data management platforms is a major plus. Change champion with the passion to challenge status quo to find innovative solutions and drive out of the box ideas Travel may be required (approximately 5-10%) Bachelor's degree + and 10+ years of relevant experience are required.