Senior Product Owner - Midnight

Job Description

Who are we?

IOHK, 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.

About Midnight:

IOG's Midnight Tribe is a business technology provider and core contributor to the Midnight Network, a blockchain platform for developing decentralized applications that safeguard personal and commercial data. The Midnight Network is the first blockchain to offer programmable data isolation by leveraging zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to enable selective disclosure of what information is visible on-chain and is designed to help developers implement necessary business policies, such as meeting regulatory requirements.

What the role involves:

As Senior Product Owner at Midnight, you will be responsible for creating feature requests into the product roadmap, grooming and prioritizing the backlog, developing user stories and defining acceptance criteria. You will work closely with the Product Manager, Product Marketing, and Customers to identify and translate features into requirements for the scrum teams.  You will balance business needs with technical requirements, and recommend alternative technical approaches to meet product requirements when needed. You will be excellent at identifying user needs and working with cross-functional teams to deliver product releases.

• Collaborates with the Product Managers  and customers to provide input into the product roadmap and drive the execution of products and features from concept to launch in a fast-paced environment.
• Translates product roadmap features into well-defined product requirements including features, user stories, and acceptance test criteria.
• Leads the product functional design process based on an intimate knowledge of the users and technology.
• Prioritizes and maintains the sprint backlog for assigned products, balancing the requirements of stakeholders.
• Works with cross-functional teams and various stakeholders, including analytics, design/user experience, engineering, and user enablement.
• Turns data insights into products with actionable outcomes to the ultimate customer.
• Works in an Agile environment and continuously reviews the business needs, refines priorities, outlines milestones and deliverables, and identifies opportunities and risks.
• Partners with operations departments to define the user experience for internal users, including production support and monitoring.
• Works with product management and product marketing to provide input into the go-to-market plan, and collaborates with the commercial team to ensure they have what they need to be successful.
• Develops and maintains appropriate tracking and reporting of product performance post-launch to evaluate future investment.

Requirements

Who you are:

• Work experience as a Product Owner or similar role in product management
• A background in distributed computing and strong experience with blockchain technologies is a plus
• Familiarity with blockchain block producers, such as Validators and Stake Pool Operators 
• Familiarity with agile, JIRA and Github is essential
• Hands-on experience managing all stages of the product life cycle
• Technical background with knowledge of software development
• Team spirit and good communication abilities
• Good organizational skills
• BSc in Computer Science, Engineering or similar field
• Balance of technical knowledge and business acumen
• Have strong leadership skills, be resourceful and use initiative while exercising personal accountability for your product
• Demonstrate competency with requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, verification, and management practices and the ability to apply them in practice.
• Leverage strong interpersonal skills to drive innovation in product development with a team of world-class engineers and Scientists.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to engage, influence, and inspire partners and stakeholders to drive collaboration and alignment across levels and roles.
• Have a keen interest in Blockchain and Cryptocurrency technology developments and trends in the product landscape. 
• Keep up to date with the status of competitors from a technical and business perspective.

Are you an IOGer?

Do you find yourself questioning the status quo? Do you tinker with ideas and long to turn those ideas into solutions? Are you able to spark thoughtful debates, bringing out the inquisitiveness in others? Does the promise of continuously growing excite you? Then get ready to reimagine everything you thought wasn’t possible because that’s what it means to be an IOGer - we don’t set limits, we break them. 

Benefits

• Remote work
• Laptop reimbursement
• New starter package to buy hardware essentials (headphones, monitor, etc)
• Learning & Development opportunities
• Competitive PTO 

At IOG, we value diversity and always treat all employees and job applicants based on merit, qualifications, competence, and talent. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.