Part-Time Product Owner (Contract)

Location: Remote, Eastern Time Zone

Department: PMO

Location Type: REMOTE

Employment Type: CONTRACT

• Location: Remote-first (U.S. – East Coast)
• Employment Type: 1099 Contractor, Part-Time (20 Hours/Week)
• Contract Rate: $55 - $68/Hour

• Translate a prioritized product roadmap into a sprint-ready backlog: decomposing epics into features and developer-ready user stories with clear acceptance criteria
• Coordinate delivery across three organizations: the clients internal stakeholders, Think Companys design team, and an external development vendor
• Lead sprint planning, backlog refinement, and sprint reviews, ensuring the dev vendor has clearly scoped, estimated, and acceptance-tested stories before each sprint
• Collaborate with Thinks design team to ensure design specs stay 1-2 sprints ahead of development, preventing dev bottlenecks
• Establish and run the product cadence from scratch, setting up ceremonies, communication rhythms, and decision-making norms rather than inheriting them
• Manage scope, timeline, and trade-off decisions within the roadmaps strategic direction, escalating to the Product Manager when priorities or sequencing need to shift
• Provide the clients primary stakeholder with structured visibility (sprint reviews, progress updates) so they can stay informed and make strategic decisions without carrying the operational burden
• Track delivery progress against outcome-based success metrics defined during the roadmap phase

• Demonstrated experience as a Product Owner or Product Manager on platform modernization or data-heavy product efforts, with a track record of shipping real outcomes rather than just managing backlogs
• Ability to decompose epics into feature and developer-ready user stories with clear acceptance criteria
• Strong written communication: concise requirements, clear decision documentation, and stakeholder updates that respect peoples time
• Solid understanding of user experience principles: you dont need to be a designer, but you should be able to evaluate whether a proposed solution serves the users workflow, provide meaningful feedback on design specs, and advocate for usability when making trade-off decisions with the dev team
• Comfort working with data-intensive products: you dont need to be a data engineer, but you should understand concepts like data pipelines, APIs, database architecture, and data quality well enough to hold credible conversations with technical teams
• Practical experience implementing Agile principles in environments where the process is being introduced or formalized, not just maintained
• Experience coordinating with external development vendors or distributed engineering teams where you lead without direct authority over the builders
• Strong facilitation skills that include demoing shipped features to non-technical stakeholders and running a backlog refinement session with engineers, adjusting your language depending on the stakeholder. 

• Background in multi-vendor environments where design and development are handled by separate teams
• Familiarity with geospatial platforms, GIS tools (Esri, PostGIS), or map-based data products
• Knowledge of product analytics tools and data-driven prioritization methods
• Experience with nonprofit, public sector, or civic technology products
• Experience helping organizations transition from ad hoc or informal product management to a structured product operating model
• CSPO, PSPO, or equivalent certification
• Experience with AI-enabled product development and leveraging AI tools to enhance product workflows