About the position
Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite our size and explosive international expansion, we continue to provide a family, employee centric atmosphere in which our employees thrive and succeed. This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world and the secret of Costco’s success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented in articles from a variety of publishers including Bloomberg and Forbes. Our employees and our members come FIRST. Costco is well known for its generosity and community service and has won many awards for its philanthropy. The company joins with its employees to take an active role in volunteering by sponsoring many opportunities to help others. Come join the Costco Wholesale IT family. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts. We are building the next generation retail environment where you will be surrounded by dedicated and highly professional employees.
Responsibilities
- Defines and communicates the minimum viable product (MVP) for a given application / product and the supporting release plans.
- Collaborates with Product Managers and technology stakeholders (e.g., Systems Architects) to define new and or enhanced product requirements and functionality.
- Collaborates with Product Managers to support the prioritization of feature enablers defined by architects within the product roadmap.
- Provides technical guidance and expertise to the development team, ensuring that products are built to the highest standards.
- Participates in technical design discussions and makes informed decisions about architectural patterns, technologies, and implementation details.
- Pursues incremental delivery by looking for ways to meet business goals and end users through frequent, measurable enhancements.
- Collaborates with Delivery Managers to ensure the work managed by teams achieves the highest value relative to needs priority of the business.
- Prioritizes the sprint backlog (as part of the sprint planning ceremony) based on the sequencing and ranking of features defined in the product roadmap.
- Refines product requirements based on the input obtained through sprint showcases and demos.
- Collaborates with the team to prepare the estimates for the user stories within the product backlog.
- Conducts the formal review and acceptance of user stories implemented by a team within a sprint.
- Drives the execution of user acceptance testing (UAT) activities with support from business and technology team members.
- Performs functional reviews as part of sprint demos and showcases along with the Product Manager and Delivery Manager.
- Supports business strategy by forming a backlog of features and user stories for use by the agile delivery team.
- Articulates requirements for each user story with detailed acceptance criteria.
- Ensures that all requirements support the business need, fulfill goals and objectives, and meet stakeholder needs.
Requirements
- 3+ years’ experience as a technical Product Owner.
- Proven experience in Software Development on an agile team.
- Proven experience with creating documentation for communication with varied audiences.
- Deep understanding of business requirements elicitation pursuant to specific programs/projects involved.
- Proficient in User Story & Acceptance criteria formulation.
- Expertise in utilizing standard documentation tools/utilities.
- Strong communication, presentation and interpersonal skills.
- Strong work ethic, demonstrated attention to detail, excellent time management and organizational skills.
- Possesses product knowledge and processes improvement skills with a demonstrated ability to effectively propose solutions.
Nice-to-haves
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
- Ability to work both independently and within a close team environment.
- Ability to listen to and understand business needs.
- Proficient in Google Workspace applications, including Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Gmail.
Benefits
- Paid time off
- Health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance
- Health care reimbursement account
- Dependent care assistance plan
- Short-term disability and long-term disability insurance
- AD&D insurance
- Life insurance
- 401(k)
- Stock purchase plan to eligible employees
