Product Specialist

Job Title

Product Specialist

Job Description

The Financial Support Office (FSO) is the Federal Reserve System's trusted partner for financial advice and innovation, serving as a 150-member team that empowers System leaders with real-time data, strategic insights, and industry expertise to enable financially informed decisions. The FSO strengthens financial management across the System by collaborating with key leadership groups including the Conference of Presidents, Conference of First Vice Presidents, and Board of Governors, while leading integrated planning, reporting, and analytics efforts. As an integral System function, the FSO manages financial operations including the Financial Management Shared Services Center (FMSSC) and National Accounting Customer Support (NACS), maintains and enhances financial management applications like Workday and Adaptive, and provides oversight for critical programs such as the Enterprise Accounting System (EASy) and Account Management Information (AMI).

Product Specialists are organizationally aligned with business lines supporting Product Management and partner with technology solution delivery teams. Responsible for creating the value of the product for internal and external stakeholders by focusing on user experience, requirement analysis and acceptance criteria. Member of the product team responsible for defining and prioritizing a team's backlog while ensuring translation of the Product Manager's vision and outcomes into stories.

Key Activities

• Collaborates with the Product Squad to ensure the right customer problem is solved; this can involve sharing market research and competitive analysis with the team to best focus their efforts
• Contributes to the work of the Product Manager as they define a product strategy and direction
• Researches and develops ideas and benefiting use cases for new system enhancements
• Recommend strategic initiatives by defining enhancements for system semi-annual release optional intake items
• Gathers, manages, and prioritizes the product backlog based on the roadmap
• Ensures user stories are "ready" for development to start – including that each story has acceptance criteria and a definition of done
• Tests changes developed by the Product Squad and supports signing off when ready for production
• Conducts user training sessions and partners with product marketing/communications and product team to develop training strategy and materials
• Connects the why/business value associated with product features to the how in demonstrations, training materials, etc.; has business and system product knowledge and is able to share with all stakeholders when needed
• Supports and participates in effective team retrospectives
• Collaborates with other dependent teams

Characteristics

• Performs work independently and is accountable for leading efforts to successful completion including partnering with product manager, sponsor, and/or stakeholders to establish the strategic direction
• Ability to provide thought leadership regarding industry experience and knowledge
• Well established credibility and trust within the team and with business stakeholders
• Assignments are of moderate to high priority, involving complex and in-depth analysis
• Strong leadership skills, including the ability to lead with influence rather than authority
• Reviews work of others, provides feedback, and serves as a knowledge resource to less experienced staff

Requirements

• Relevant bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university, or equivalent combination of directly related education and/or experience
• Specialized understanding of the business line industry and of technology delivery or product management
• Typically requires five years of experience in a combination of technology product management, business line industry knowledge, or related technology delivery.
• Knowledge of applicable software development life cycle methodologies (e.g., Agile SCRUM)

The salary range for this position is $ 130,300.00 - 162,900.00 - 195,500.00. The Boston Fed believes in salary transparency. The final salary and offer will be determined by the applicant's background, skills, internal equity, and alignment with market data. Whether you're developing into the job or are a more seasoned candidate, we aim to pay competitively. If you reside outside of the 1st District, you may be hired by your local Federal Reserve District and compensation will follow hiring District's range and policy. As a condition of employment, all Federal Reserve Bank of Boston employees must comply with the Bank's ethics rules, which generally prohibit employees, their spouses/domestic partners, and minor children from owning financial interests – such as stocks or bonds – from banks, savings associations, and systemically important financial institutions or their affiliates, such as bank holding companies or savings and loan holding companies. If you, your spouse or domestic partner, or your minor child own such assets and would be unwilling or unable to divest them if you were to accept a job offer, you should raise this issue with our recruitment team. Applicants should review the Bank's Employee Code of Conduct to ensure compliance with conflict of interest rules and personal investment restrictions.

All employees assigned to this position will be subject to FBI fingerprint/ criminal background and Patriot Act/ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) watch list checks at least once every five years. All candidates must undergo an enhanced background check and comply with all applicable information handling rules.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work required of this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities or skills associated with this position or the personnel so classified. While this job description is intended to be an accurate reflection of this position, management reserves the right to revise this or any job description at its discretion at any time.