Product Owner

Job Title: Product Owner

Duration: 1 year

Location: 530 8th AVENUE SW Calgary Alberta, CAN, T2P 3S8 - Hybrid, 3 to 4 days per week in office, 1-2 days per week from home. Candidates must be located in either Calgary AB or Edmonton AB.

Hours per Day: 8

Hours per Week:40

Job Summary:

The Senior Product Owner is an individual contributor who provides product leadership through influence for an Alberta SAP agile delivery team. Working across business and technology functions, the role translates approved business outcomes and product direction into a clear, prioritized, and delivery-ready backlog for continuous product improvement. The Senior Product Owner facilitates from idea through to post-launch analysis aligning value and sequencing trade-offs. The candidate will work closely with stakeholders, to deliver measurable improvements to the company and end users.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Establish and communicate a clear product direction for the assigned team, grounded in approved business outcomes, customer and employee needs, operational priorities, risk, and technology health.
• Define and create epics, features, user stories and acceptance criteria working with the Scrum Master, Business Analyst, SMEs, developers, and testers to ensure stories and acceptance criteria are sufficiently detailed and understood.
• Own backlog prioritization and release sequencing within approved portfolio, funding, policy, architecture, and regulatory guardrails, incorporating input from Business Owners, customers, operational teams, subject matter experts, and delivery partners; recommend value and timing trade-offs and escalate unresolved outcomes or conflicts to the appropriate Business Owner or governance forum.
• Lead refinement, sprint and release planning, and sprint demos; create forums for stakeholders to provide timely input, build shared understanding of priorities and trade-offs, and make clear product, scope, and priority decisions.
• Identify and reduce customer and employee friction by using feedback, journey insights, operational data, and root-cause analysis to simplify processes, improve handoffs, and prioritise product improvements that deliver measurable customer and business outcomes.
• Ensure testing readiness and quality governance by validating acceptance criteria, obtaining QA sign-off, and confirming entry criteria are met before business UAT commences
• Develop and maintain appropriate tracking and reporting of product key metrics to report on delivery forecasts, capacity and product performance for existing and new features.
• Identify and actively manage cross-team and cross-functional dependencies, risks, assumptions, and decision needs, engaging the appropriate owners early.
• Partner across Customer Care, Acquisition and Sales, Retention, Products and Pricing, Billing, Payments, Credit and Collections, Remittance, Customer Communications, Customer Management, Digital, Regulatory, Legal and Compliance, Finance, Analytics, Change Management, Quality Assurance, SAP delivery, and external vendors as required by the team mandate.
• Provide the Business with reliable delivery timing, release, and change information so Business Owners can correlate changes to their KPI reporting and assess benefits.
• Use stakeholder feedback, customer and employee insights, operational evidence, risk, strategic alignment, and delivery data to assess competing needs, recommend transparent backlog adjustments, and identify continuous improvement opportunities.
• Contribute product expertise to Canada’s strategic portfolio and operational planning for continuous improvement work. Strategic projects remain accountable through their assigned sponsor, Project Manager, governance, scope, schedule, budget, RAID, and readiness structures.
• Support other members of the Alberta SAP team with analytics, troubleshooting, and testing as needed.
• Proactively develop and maintain a comprehensive understanding of assigned products, including underlying systems and processes, upstream and downstream impacts, control points, and key handoffs.
• Partner with subject matter experts, other product owners and business owners to identify and assess system, process, customer, operational, and regulatory impacts of material changes and ensures operational readiness is considered in backlog and release decisions.
• Ensure Product Owner practices and backlog management align with NRG Consumer Agile Standards of Execution.

Working Conditions:

• Hybrid working environment
• Some travel may be required
• Due to the nature of IT releases working hours may adjust

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, operations, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• 8+ years of progressive experience as a Product Owner or in a comparable role within a complex, integrated product or enterprise-platform environment.
• Strong judgment, organization, curiosity, personal accountability, and ability to manage competing priorities
• Strong working knowledge of Agile product delivery, including refinement, planning, review, acceptance, flow, and evidence-based prioritization.
• Proven track record of delivering data-driven strategy and solutions with a customer-first mindset.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, facilitation, negotiation, time management and conflict-resolution skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with SAP CRM, SAP S/4HANA, or comparable integrated enterprise platforms.
• Experience in Alberta or Canadian energy retail, customer operations, regulated environments, or complex customer lifecycle processes.
• Experience partnering effectively with dedicated Business Analysts, cross-functional SMEs, SAP delivery teams, architecture, testing, change, and vendors.
• Familiarity with Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or hybrid enterprise delivery environments and tools such as Azure DevOps and Smartsheets.
• Product Owner, Agile, or product management certification.