Senior Product Owner - Bitcoin Defi
Who are we?
IOG, is a technology company focused on Blockchain research and development. We are renowned for our scientific approach to blockchain development, emphasizing peer-reviewed research and formal methods to ensure security, scalability, and sustainability. Our projects include decentralized finance (DeFi), governance, and identity management, aiming to advance the capabilities and adoption of blockchain technology globally.
We invest in the unknown, applying our curiosity and desire for positive change to everything we do. By fueling creativity, innovation, and progress within our teams, our products and services are designed for people to be fearless, to be changemakers.
Requirements
Job Purpose
The Senior Product Owner independently owns a product domain and leads the end-to-end delivery of high-impact features and platforms. The role converts strategy into validated outcomes by defining problems, shaping solutions with engineering and design, sequencing work across one or more teams, and measuring value delivered to users, especially developers and ecosystem partners. The Senior PO mentors other POs, raises delivery quality, and is accountable for domain-level outcomes, not just feature output.
Key Responsibilities
Domain Strategy & Outcome Ownership
- Translate portfolio strategy into a domain roadmap, value hypotheses, and success metrics.
- Maintain an outcomes-oriented backlog with clear acceptance criteria and Definition of Done.
- Manage technical debt, platform health, and non-functionals (performance, security, reliability).
Execution & Delivery Leadership
- Lead backlog refinement, sprint planning, and release planning across one or more teams.
- Orchestrate dependencies with adjacent domains (APIs, data, wallets, infra).
- Run continuous discovery and phased rollouts; ensure measurable value delivery.
Mentoring & Capability Uplift
- Mentor P3 Product Owners/Analysts through structured 1:1s, shadowing, and feedback on PRDs/specs.
- Establish PO best practices (templates, decision logs, acceptance criteria standards) and coach teams to adopt them.
- Partner with Engineering Leads to develop PO/PM career paths and learning plans; contribute to calibration and hiring.
User, Developer & Market Insight
- Operate systematic feedback loops with developers, node operators, partners, and internal users.
- Validate direction via interviews, telemetry, and market scans; capture decisions in PRDs/specs.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Co-design solution options and risk treatment with Engineering Leads/Architects.
- Coordinate with Product Marketing and DevRel on docs, release notes, and adoption plays; ensure launch readiness.
- Contribute to quarterly planning; surface capacity needs, trade-offs, and investment cases.
Quality, Risk & Compliance
- Ensure traceable requirements, testability, and documentation quality (APIs, migration guides, runbooks).
- Track delivery health (flow metrics) and product health (SLIs/SLOs); manage risks/incidents to closure.
Key Competencies
- Domain ownership: Drives a product domain to OKRs and measurable outcomes.
- Execution leadership: Orchestrates delivery across multiple teams; improves flow and predictability.
- Technical fluency: Debates architecture/APIs; turns constraints into product choices.
- Prioritization & judgment: Clear, evidence-based cut lines and trade-offs.
- Strategic alignment: Sequences bets to de-risk and advance portfolio strategy.
- Developer/user empathy: Clean interfaces, docs, and migrations; faster time-to-first-success.
- Evidence-led discovery: Interviews, experiments, telemetry → decisive backlog changes.
- Stakeholder influence: Aligns Eng Leads/Architects/PMM; resolves conflicts fast.
- Risk & quality: Bakes in SLIs/SLOs; manages debt/incidents with solid acceptance criteria.
- Mentoring & practice: Coaches ; uplifts templates, standards, and review quality.
Education / Experience
- Typically 6–8+ years in software product roles with 2–3 years owning a complex domain or platform.
- Proven end-to-end delivery across the full product lifecycle (discovery → PRD/spec → release → adoption/iteration) in an Agile environment.
- Technical background sufficient to collaborate on architecture, APIs, and data flows (e.g., reading code, reviewing API designs, assessing trade-offs).
- Experience with blockchain/distributed systems or developer platforms (e.g., nodes, wallets, SDKs, APIs), including performance, reliability, and security considerations.
- Hands-on use of Agile tooling (Jira, GitHub) and telemetry/analytics (e.g., Grafana/Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Amplitude/GA) to drive decisions.
- Strong written communication (clear PRDs/specs, decision logs) and stakeholder management across engineering, security, DevRel, and commercial teams.
- Demonstrated mentoring/coaching of Product Owners; contributes to practice standards and hiring/calibration.
- BSc in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Benefits
- Flexible schedule
- Remote work
- Laptop reimbursement
- New starter package to buy hardware essentials (headphones, monitor, etc)
- Learning & Development opportunities