Product Owner

As a Product Owner at Vestmark, your primary responsibilities include communicating with clients and internal stakeholders to elicit functional requirements, developing user stories, leading an engineering team, and collaborating actively with Product Management to maintain and prioritize the product backlog. These tasks are vital to ensure that our VestmarkONE application delivers maximum business value.

To apply for the Product Owner position at Vestmark, candidates should hold a bachelor's degree or possess equivalent work experience. Additionally, having at least 3 years as a Product Owner or Business Analyst, particularly with experience in the financial services industry, will help you stand out in the application process.

The Product Owner role at Vestmark is designed to be hybrid, which means you will have flexibility to work both remotely and from our Wakefield, MA headquarters. This model allows you to balance team collaboration and independent work efficiently, ensuring you can contribute meaningfully to product development.

In the Product Owner role at Vestmark, you will likely use a variety of tools and technologies including XML, REST, and SQL. Familiarity with Amazon OP1 and its associated documentation is also a plus as these technologies will aid you in effectively managing product features and enhancements.

At Vestmark, the work culture emphasizes inclusivity and the celebration of diversity. As a Product Owner, you'll experience a supportive environment where core values like positive energy, knowledge exploration, and the principle of 'We Before Me' are actively promoted, fostering personal and professional growth.

To answer this question effectively, showcase your past roles and the impact you made as a Product Owner. Highlight specific projects where you successfully gathered requirements, prioritized backlogs, and collaborated with teams to deliver notable enhancements.

You can convey your approach to prioritizing the product backlog by discussing methods like stakeholder feedback, user stories, and business value. Mention a specific framework or technique, such as MoSCoW or RICE, you’ve utilized to make these prioritization decisions in your previous roles.

Discuss your systematic approach, such as conducting interviews, facilitating workshops, and using surveys. Emphasize your communication skills and ability to facilitate productive discussions to ensure that diverse perspectives are incorporated into the requirements.

When asked this, provide a specific example where you encountered a significant challenge, such as shifting priorities or scope creep, and elaborate on how you managed to navigate through it while maintaining stakeholder satisfaction and delivering on expectations.

Describe your collaborative approach, such as holding regular meetings with the engineering team, creating detailed user stories, and providing clear acceptance criteria. Share how you encourage open communication to address questions and ensure alignment throughout the development cycle.

You could mention metrics like user adoption rates, user feedback, or performance indicators such as NPS scores. Explain how you analyze this data and adjust your strategies for future iterations of the product.

Discuss how you actively engage with stakeholders to understand broader business goals and align the product roadmap accordingly. Providing examples of how you tracked progress and made adjustments to ensure alignment will strengthen your answer.

Here, you should elaborate on your previous roles related to financial services, particularly any experience you have in portfolio management, trading, or back office operations, all of which are highly relevant to the Product Owner role at Vestmark.

Talk about your prioritization strategies, including the importance of communication and transparency with stakeholders. Discuss any frameworks you've employed to evaluate project urgency and impact, ensuring that the most critical tasks are addressed first.

Highlight your ability to translate technical jargon into understandable terms for non-technical stakeholders. Focus on your use of visual aids, analogies, and straightforward language to facilitate clear communication and foster understanding.