Product Owner in London

As people increasingly move across channels and platforms, Kantar Media's data and audience measurement, targeting, analytics and advertising intelligence services unlock insights to inform powerful decision-making. Working with panel and first-party data in over 80 countries, we have the world's fastest growing cross-media measurement footprint, underpinned by versatility, scale, technology and expertise, to drive long-term business growth for our clients and partners.

About the Project/Role

The Product Owner (PO) of the Data Integration (DI) team leads and owns the development and performance of the modelling capabilities (Calibration, Fusion, XMP) throughout its entire lifecycle: analysis, monitoring, development, maintenance and continuous improvement. The key areas within her/his remits are Data Science models implemented in production software to enable integration of datasets (panel, census, other) into product deliverables.

The PO is a member of the Product Team, that will join the Agile Cross functional Team consisting of Data Science and IT devt team members, as the one responsible for defining Stories and prioritizing the Team Backlog to streamline the execution of program/solution priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the Features or components for the team.

In this position, the PO will serve as the customer proxy responsible for working with Product Management for CMAM, the Methodology functions and eventually other internal/external stakeholders, including other POs, to collect and understand the business requirements for new product features, define and prioritize stories in the Team Backlog, and interact with the Agile team to track the sprint progress. The PO will have a significant role in maximizing the value produced by the team and ensure stories meet the user's needs and comply with the definition of done.

The PO will join the agile team in the usual Scrum ceremonies but could also be requested to join the relevant Product Management events for planning and Program Backlog/Vision refinement. It is expected that the PO can contribute to build the product vision, Roadmap, and content presentations, supporting the Product Management function if needed.

Job Role Requirements

• Owns the Team Backlog, provides prioritization
• Take the lead of agile teams as the Product Owner
• Preparation and participation in the Sprint plan. Defines iterations (releases), defines User Stories (create requirements) and refines/updates the team backlog. During the Sprint planning the PO provides the necessary clarifications to assist the team with their story estimates and sequencing
• Track the release progress collaborating closely with the Agile Team, ensuring that the team always has an adequate amount of prior prepared tasks to work on
• Lead the planning product release plans and set the expectation for delivery of new functionalities
• Support the development squad teams to rebalance effort between user story development and defect/ticket resolution, on a daily basis
• Support the development of and the execution of acceptance tests based on acceptance criteria, coordinating all test activities and ensuring that each story meets acceptance criteria
• Analyze and report delivery, progress, risks and opportunities
• Ensure that the technical debt is properly managed, with the support of SW Architecture leads
• Coordinates dependencies with other POs
• Contributes to the Product vision/strategy and Roadmap
• Understand, challenge, and communicate the product vision/strategy developed by Product management to the Agile development team and feedback to Product Management
• Work closely with Product Management to create and maintain a product backlog that relates to the solution backlog owned by the Product Manager, according to business value or ROI
• Build Product Documentation

Role Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Data Science, Telecommunications or equivalent, enriched with technical and data science modelling knowledge
• Demonstrable knowledge on Programming Languages, Data Management Tools and Cloud solutions
• Have strong communication and leadership skills to navigate in a dynamic/global organization across multiple countries
• Teamwork and team-player
• Knowledge of agile and scrum methodologies, Product Owner certification or similar is a plus
• Provide an active role in mitigating impediments impacting successful team completion of Release/Sprint Goals
• Established background in developing, launching software or services in partnership with engineering teams and high degree of proficiency in prototyping, iterative development, understanding of Agile principles
• Capable to collect, interpret and translate data to support product and business decisions (incl. A/B testing, User Testing, Analytics, Market Research, Competitor Analysis, Defining Metrics and KPIs)
• Strong analytical abilities, problem-solving skills and functional understanding of customer business processes
• Excellent organizational and time management skills. Ability to multitask and work under pressure
• Are highly proficient in spoken and written English (we are an international team), other languages is a plus
• Proven experience (ideally 3-4 years) in a similar role (e.g. as a Software Engineer, Data Scientist or Product Owner) in a digital or modelling business
• Experience with Agile and SAFe frameworks for software development
• Experience working with agile teams and aligning with stakeholders to deliver with fast time-to-market, quality and ownership
• Experience in data science techniques, statistics, analysis is always nice to have

At Kantar, the diversity of our employees provides a richer environment for our employees and broader depth and breadth of thinking for our clients. Kantar is committed to inclusion and diversity; therefore, we welcome applications from all sections of society and do not discriminate based on age, race, religion, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, marital status, or any other legally protected characteristics.

At Kantar we have an integrated way of rewarding our people based around a simple, clear, and consistent set of principles. Our approach helps to ensure we are market competitive and to support a pay for performance culture, where your reward and career progression opportunities are linked to what you deliver.

We want to create an equality of opportunity in a fair and supportive working environment where people feel included, accepted, and are allowed to flourish in a space where their mental health and wellbeing is taken into consideration. We want to create a more diverse community to expand our talent pool, be locally representative, drive diversity of thinking and better commercial outcomes.