System Product Owner

Description

You will be the main link between product stakeholders and the engineering team, keeping development work tied to product goals, customer needs, technical limits and delivery commitments.

The company is a global technology group serving governments, institutions and enterprises in defence and security, aerospace and space, and cybersecurity and digital identity.

The Romania engineering group builds and integrates software for naval and maritime systems, air traffic management, satellite solutions, tactical indoor simulations, and identity and biometric technologies.

Responsibilities

• Act as the first point of contact for the team on functional and technical questions, and bring in experts when needed.
• Help shape the product vision and roadmap with the CPO, the Initiative Owner and other relevant stakeholders.
• Turn customer and operational needs into clear functional and technical goals.
• Keep system requirements, product priorities and engineering work in step with each other.
• Collect feedback from stakeholders, demonstrations and operational users.
• Own and rank the Team Backlog using input from the CPO and Initiative Owner.
• Help break Initiatives into Epics, Epics into Features and Features into clear, actionable User Stories.
• Make sure requirements stay complete, consistent and traceable across the development lifecycle.
• Write and review User Stories and Acceptance Criteria with engineers.
• Keep refining and reordering backlog items by business value, technical dependencies, risk and available capacity.
• Accept or reject finished User Stories against agreed Acceptance Criteria and the Definition of Done.
• Answer functional and technical questions from engineers throughout each development cycle.
• Run co-engineering, backlog refinement and Agile ceremonies together with the Scrum Master.
• Take part in team and Agile Release Train (ART) planning, reviews and demonstrations.
• Support technical decisions, architectural alignment and growth of the Architectural Runway.
• Find and resolve functional dependencies, risks and blockers that affect delivery.
• Champion Built-In Quality so delivered work meets functional requirements and customer expectations.
• Manage and track budgets at Epic and Feature level in Jira.
• Keep scope and budgets matched to agreed commitments.
• Track functional and financial progress using EVM indicators and key delivery metrics, and analyse gaps between plan and actual in scope, cost and schedule.
• Hold regular end-of-sprint reviews with the Initiative Owner on progress, budget use and possible scope changes.
• Report delivery performance, financial status, risks and deviations to the IO, CPO and RTE, and help decide corrective actions and priorities that keep delivery predictable.
• Run product and system demonstrations for internal and external stakeholders to gather feedback.
• Feed lessons learned, customer feedback and operational insights into backlog priorities.
• Push for better requirements quality, stronger engineering collaboration and better delivery practices.
• Help the team work more independently, share knowledge and raise overall product quality.

Requirements

• Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science or a closely related technical field.
• Significant experience in Systems Engineering, Software Engineering or complex technical product development.
• Prior experience in Product Ownership, technical project management or system-level product development, ideally in an Agile setting.
• Strong grasp of customer needs and the ability to turn them into clear technical and functional requirements.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and decision-making skills, with the ability to manage complex systems and competing priorities.
• Clear communicator who can align engineering teams, product stakeholders and management.
• Autonomous and proactive, comfortable owning technical and functional decisions within your scope.
• Collaborative, customer-focused and committed to continuous improvement.
• Solid grasp of Systems Engineering principles, requirements management, system architecture and functional decomposition.
• Able to analyse complex systems, see dependencies between components and judge the impact of technical decisions.
• Knowledge of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), UML and system modelling practice.
• Understanding of system integration, verification, validation and qualification (IVVQ) and RAMT principles.
• Familiarity with software development lifecycles, testing practice, configuration management and engineering quality standards.
• Strong knowledge of Agile methods and frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban and Agile at Scale.
• Experience managing and prioritising backlogs, defining Features and User Stories, and setting clear Acceptance Criteria.
• Able to turn Epics and Features into development work that stays functionally and technically consistent.
• Proficient with Jira.
• Able to balance customer value, technical constraints, delivery capacity and project commitments.
• Able to coordinate with CPOs, IOs, engineering teams and other stakeholders.
• Understanding of budget allocation, cost tracking and financial performance monitoring at Epic and Feature level.
• Familiar with Earned Value Management (EVM), progress reporting and variance analysis.
• Experience in Air Traffic Management (ATM), Air Traffic Control (ATC) or other safety-critical systems.
• Knowledge of complex, distributed and real-time software-intensive systems.
• Experience working in international, multi-site engineering organisations.
• Familiarity with SAFe or equivalent Agile-at-Scale frameworks.
• Knowledge of aviation engineering standards and certification constraints.

Conditions

The role sits within the Romania engineering team.