Technology Product Owner, Controls Technology

About the Role

Join the Controls Technology division as a Technology Product Owner. In this critical role, you will act as the bridge between complex business needs and our engineering teams. You will be empowered to translate intricate requirements for risk and control systems into a flawlessly managed backlog of epics and user stories. Your primary mission is to drive the delivery of high-quality, compliant software by ensuring our development teams have the clarity and context needed to execute effectively, sprint after sprint. This is a role for a product owner — someone who thrives on execution, champions quality, and is passionate about building world-class technology solutions in a dynamic, global financial environment.

What You'll Do

1. Backlog Ownership & Agile Execution

• Own and Master the Backlog: Meticulously create, refine, and prioritize the product backlog, ensuring it is transparent, well-understood, and always ready for at least two sprints ahead.
• Translate Vision into Action: Deconstruct complex business requirements into well-defined Epics, User Stories, and precise Acceptance Criteria, ensuring a high percentage of stories are accepted without rework.
• Drive Sprint Success: Serve as the dedicated point of contact for the engineering team, providing unwavering clarity during sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and throughout the development cycle to remove ambiguity.

2. Solution Definition & Quality Assurance

• Define the "What": Partner with business stakeholders to elicit, analyze, and document requirements, defining the precise solution to be built.
• Champion Quality: Drive a quality-first mindset with a relentless focus on clear, testable acceptance criteria to minimize ambiguity and reduce critical defects in UAT.
• Demonstrate Value: Conduct compelling demos of new functionalities to stakeholders, showcasing the value delivered and gathering immediate feedback for iterative improvement.
• Track Performance: Track and report product performance post-launch to evaluate outcomes and support decisions around future investment.

3. Stakeholder Collaboration & Domain Leadership

• Build Partnerships: Act as the key liaison between business users, engineering teams, UX and other technology partners, fostering a collaborative environment to ensure seamless delivery; seeking continuous input from stakeholders and incorporating it into the backlog.
• Become the SME: Develop a deep expertise in your assigned Controls Technology modules, becoming the recognized go-to subject matter expert for the team and key stakeholders.
• Facilitate with Purpose: Lead and actively contribute to all agile ceremonies, ensuring refinement and planning sessions are efficient, productive, and outcome focused.
• Dependency & Risk Management: Identify and manage cross-team and cross-platform dependencies early in the delivery lifecycle. Proactively highlight delivery risks, data dependencies, and integration challenges, and work with stakeholders to drive timely resolution.
• Communicate Clearly: Communicate priorities, dependencies, risks, and delivery status clearly to stakeholders and leadership. Support informed decision-making by articulating trade-offs and impacts across teams and timelines.
• Align on OKRs: Develop a culture of using OKRs to ensure team members align on the purpose of the work and cascade feedback related to risk and dependencies.

4. Innovation in Execution

• Leverage AI Tools: Utilize cutting-edge AI tools to accelerate requirements analysis, improve the quality of user story documentation, and enhance feature file generation.
• Mitigate Risk Proactively: Identify and flag potential risks and dependencies that could impact schedule or quality, and work with leadership to drive mitigation strategies.

What We're Looking For

Core Qualifications:

• Experience: 8+ years of experience in a technology-centric role within the financial services industry, including 5+ years as a dedicated, execution-focused Product Owner in an Agile/Scrum environment.
• Domain Expertise: Proven background in Risk and Controls, Operational Risk, or Regulatory functions.
• Agile Product Expertise: Deep, hands-on expertise in managing a product backlog, writing high-quality user stories, story maps, and leading agile ceremonies (knowledge of SAFe Agile is preferred).
• Technical Fluency: A strong ability to understand technical concepts and engage in detailed discussions with engineering teams on feasibility and solutioning.
• Stakeholder Management: Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with demonstrated end-to-end ownership of deliverables.
• Education: Bachelor's degree in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, Engineering, Finance). A management degree such as an MBA is a plus.

Preferred Skills & Certifications:

• Certifications: Industry-recognized certifications such as CSPO, A-CSPO, PSPO, SAFe POPM, or CBAP are highly desirable.
• Tooling: Expert-level proficiency with agile management software (e.g., Jira, Confluence).
• AI in Practice: Hands-on experience using AI tools within a software development lifecycle is a significant advantage.
• Generative & Agentic AI Knowledge: Strong understanding of Generative AI and Agentic AI concepts and their applications in a product context.
• AI-Driven Capabilities: Experience contributing to initiatives involving AI-enabled or data-driven capabilities, such as intelligent monitoring, automation, or insights generation.
• AI Integration: Experience partnering with data, engineering, and platform teams to support integration of AI capabilities into risk and control platforms.
• AI Governance: Familiarity with ensuring AI solutions align with risk, governance, and explainability expectations.

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In addition to salary, Citi’s offerings may also include, for eligible employees, discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards. Citi offers competitive employee benefits, including: medical, dental & vision coverage; 401(k); life, accident, and disability insurance; and wellness programs. Citi also offers paid time off packages, including planned time off (vacation), unplanned time off (sick leave), and paid holidays. For additional information regarding Citi employee benefits, please visit citibenefits.com. Available offerings may vary by jurisdiction, job level, and date of hire.

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Automated Processing and AI

We use automated processing, including artificial intelligence, for our legitimate business interests (or our reasonable and appropriate business purposes) to identify and align the candidate's skills and abilities with a specific job opening. Additionally, if you so choose, or consent, we can match your skills and abilities to other suitable roles at Citi.

Importantly, all our hiring processes and decisions, including determining your suitability for a role, are conducted, checked, and decided by individuals. Our automated processing and AI do not involve relying on automatic or autonomous decision-making. Please refer to any Jurisdictional Considerations, with specific provisions for your country (where relevant) for further details.

Illinois residents – AI Notice and Right

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Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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