Product Owner II

Purpose of the Job: The Payments Solutions Product Owner II is a member of the Shoprite Financial Services Agile team, responsible for defining user stories and prioritising the Payments Solutions In-Store Payments product backlog to support the successful delivery of programme priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the team's products and features. The role owns products of varying complexity and works collaboratively with Product Management, Technology teams, Business stakeholders, and vendors to execute the product vision, strategy, and roadmap, ensuring the delivery of high-quality, customer-centric payment solutions that create value for the business.

Job Objectives

• Contribute to the refinement of the Programme Backlog, ensuring the Agile team is familiar with the features being introduced into PI Planning and keeping Product Management informed of progress towards achieving Programme Increment (PI) objectives.
• Continuously refine, prioritise, and manage the Payments Solutions product backlog by: Providing clear direction and priorities to the Agile team. Gathering, analysing, and documenting business and user requirements as user stories with clear acceptance criteria in Jira. Prioritising and sequencing the product backlog to align with the Shoprite Financial Services product strategy, business priorities, and stakeholder requirements. Ensuring the backlog is sufficiently refined and prepared for upcoming iterations, with enough user stories and enablers ready for development. Facilitating backlog refinement sessions to ensure the team has a clear understanding of upcoming work. Ensuring the team is familiar with the features being introduced into Sprint Planning. Collaborating closely with the Product Manager and cross-functional teams to refine and maintain the Programme Backlog. Keeping the Product Manager informed of progress towards Sprint and PI objectives.
• Provide visible, transparent, and decisive product direction by: Communicating clear priorities to the Agile team. Applying customer-led decision-making principles to maximise business value. Sequencing user stories based on PI objectives, business value, and team capacity. Balancing strategic priorities with team capacity and delivery commitments. Ensuring backlog readiness for each iteration. Encouraging team participation during backlog refinement to improve understanding and delivery
• Participate in relevant Scrum ceremonies and ART-level events, including ART Sync, Product Owner Scrum of Scrums, Inspect and Adapt workshops, PI Planning, Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retrospectives, Daily Stand-ups, and System Demonstrations.
• Track progress towards the successful delivery of new payment methods, products, compliance changes, and product enhancements, ensuring milestones and objectives are achieved.
• Ensure a consistent and seamless customer experience across all payment touchpoints within the Shoprite customer journey.
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of the customer payment experience by supporting initiatives that enhance payment approvals and reduce payment declines.
• Champion payment product capabilities and advocate for customer-centric product design, ensuring solutions meet customer needs while delivering business value.
• Support the continuous improvement of payment service levels across the business and the broader payment ecosystem.
• Provide integrated reporting, insights, and feedback on product performance, delivery progress, and operational outcomes to relevant stakeholders.
• Manage day-to-day operational activities, ensuring the team has sufficient capacity to support operational incidents, business-as-usual activities, and store-level operational support.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Information Technology, Engineering, Finance, or a related field (essential).
• Certified Product Owner (CSPO) or SAFe® Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM) certification (essential).

Experience

• Minimum of 4 years' experience in a Product Owner or related Payments role within an Agile environment, with a proven track record of successfully launching new product features and translating business strategy and analysis into customer-focused product solutions (essential).
• Experience collaborating within cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams to successfully deliver projects (essential).
• Commercial experience within digital and in-store payments, banking, fintech, or payment enablement environments (essential).
• Experience delivering customer payment solutions and driving customer-centric product enhancements (essential).
• Knowledge of relevant legal and regulatory requirements, including PCI DSS, scheme mandates, POPIA, the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA), and other applicable legislation (desired).
• Experience within the retail and/or payments industry (desired).
• Exposure to the African payments landscape and customer payment behaviours (desired).
• Demonstrated knowledge of payment technologies, including ACI Postilion, Config Server, and eSocket POS, will be advantageous.

Knowledge and Skills

• Strong analytical skills with experience working with data, analytics, and data-driven decision-making (desired).