Product Owner

Posted Jun 11

WatchGuard embraces a Flexible Work Philosophy. Most of our employees can choose to work from the office, at home, or any combination of the two. We’ve built a global workforce of outstanding team members and a flexible culture built on trust, collaboration, and belonging.

WHO YOU ARE

You bring a strong understanding of SCRUM methodology in software development and have a successful background of several years in SCRUM projects management, in which your contribution as a Product Owner has been key to build and deploy top products to the market.

As the excellent Product Owner you are, you lead the requirements gathering, definition, prioritization, and allocation of user stories to the scrum work teams with the purpose of executing strategic technical projects within the company you work for. You are deeply familiar with continuous integration environments and code quality and well experienced in project management related to backend processes.

In addition, your strong project management skills make of you a committed owner of your projects, taking responsibility of everything necessary for the project to generate the defined results. You are well experienced and confident enough to work both, autonomously and collaboratively, to define the most convenient scope, structure and plan the project and deal with potential risk so that the execution of the project is ensure on time.

THE OPPORTUNITY

WatchGuard competes in a highly demanding and very dynamic market to implement its mission: to make enterprise-grade security accessible to all organizations via a powerful channel partner network of Managed Service Providers.

In a rapidly changing environment like this, differentiating yourself from the rest of the solutions that competitors offer to the market is mandatory. The candidate will report to the Product Management department and will work closely with the Research team. Within the Engineering area, the Research team has the purpose of achieving this differentiation with respect to the competition through the implementation of innovation projects. The way to turn a disruptive idea into a real-world solution is not always easy or obvious and that is where the people who make up our team help make a difference, putting at the service of clients and projects their talent, motivation, and commitment to build what seemed impossible. You'll join a team of data scientists, cybersecurity researchers, developers and other product owners. Most of the team has been in the company for more than 15 years, which will facilitate your learning in their areas of expertise, and you will feel supported and accompanied in that process. In the same way, we want to learn from you and that you share with us what you do best to incorporate new and better ways of doing.

This team contribution to WG vision has been mainly focused on pioneer endpoint security solutions, having all in common that are implemented as cloud security services using Machine Learning on the top of a Big Data platform.

WatchGuard needs to take its Big Data platform further to enhance its capabilities and make of it the best Threat Hunting platform in the market. You will be the Product Owner of a development team oriented to the evolve this Threat Hunting platform, so your main tasks will focus on defining the backlog of this team. You will need to maintain a continuous and fluid dialogue with the different stakeholders of the project, from Product Managers to the team of hunters of the WatchGuard malware laboratory, key customers, and the Research team. You will be responsible of ensuring the value deployment in time as defined.

You will work on an innovative project, in which technology, data and process automation around them are at the heart of the strategy, to build a knowledge management and data analytics platform to support and scale our Threat Hunting services solution.

As you can see, getting bored is not an option!

Here’s what that will look like:

30/60/90 Plan

  • At 30 days – You will meet the people who can help you the most to get to know the projects and the teams. You will also have a clear understanding of your owned key projects, including their purpose, goals, metrics and expected results. This first 30 days training period you will also get familiar with documentation tools and procedures, workflows, and methodologies.
  • At 60 days – You will be probably leading your projects by your own. It’s expected that you may need some help in project definition, especially in those parts you may not be previously experienced. That’s why you should have a fluent collaboration relationship with your peers and the team members, that are the technically skilled people.
  • At 90 days: Training will end up by the end of the 3rd month. You will be now working independently on your daily tasks, collaborating with several people in different teams to keep the pace of the projects you lead. You will always be helped with whatever you need in all senses (technically, organizationally, etc.).

Position Responsibilities

  • To lead the vision of the projects in charge, getting involved in the definition and communication processes, both to the stakeholders and to the technical teams in charge of its execution.
  • Convert this vision into functional requirements, defining precisely with the stakeholders involved the "MVP" - Minimum Viable Product.
  • Elaboration of the project backlog, defining the user stories with the level of detail required for their correct understanding by the development team to facilitate their accurate estimation.
  • Define the priorities in the backlog, negotiating with other Product Owners and stakeholders according to the execution capacity of the teams and the global strategy of the area.
  • Perform the functional analysis of the project to validate its global feasibility, relying on the different development teams to validate the technical feasibility.
  • Participate in the tasks of architecture definition and technical analysis to ensure the critical variables of project execution: scope (value), quality and delivery time.
  • Structuring the project into deliverables of value to the customer.
  • Fluid communication with the team both in the Planning Meeting sessions and during the sprints for the resolution of doubts that may arise.
  • Validation of the test plans defined in the project and their results.
  • Management of scope changes during the life of the project: communication of these changes to the involved development teams, modification of the analysis and project plan.
  • Supervision and monitoring of the project in all its phases.
  • Leading the project meetings associated with your position according to the Scrum methodology.

Skills and Qualifications

  • Knowledge and experience using agile methodologies (SCRUM).
  • Strong leadership skills.
  • Strong service orientation to the team: we need a product owner who brings value not only to the project but also to the team members, understanding their needs, getting involved in solving their difficulties and actively helping them in achieving the objectives.
  • Analytical, reflective, with no tendency to rush.
  • Enthusiastic attitude towards challenges and passionate about technology. Ability to transmit this enthusiasm and passion.
  • Excellent communication skills, facilitator and empathetic.
  • Able to be self-managed and as a member of a team.
  • Ability to work from a home or remote office location.
  • English communication skills are essential

Why Work for WatchGuard?

WatchGuard is a global leader in network security and intelligence, advanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and secure Wi-Fi. Our award-winning products and services are trusted worldwide by more than 18,000 security resellers and service providers to protect more than 250,000 customers. Our technology keeps our customers ahead of increasingly sophisticated hackers and has fueled record revenues at WatchGuard.

WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with team members working remotely and in offices worldwide.

Our company culture places an intense focus on our customers and employees. From the newest employee to our CEO, you'll find that each person at WatchGuard embodies our Core Values: Accountability, Community, Belonging, Action, Innovation, and Customer-Centric. Learn more about our company culture at www.watchguard.com/wgrd-careers.

WatchGuard provides equal employment opportunities for all qualified employees, regardless of their race, color, national origin, religion, ancestry, creed, pregnancy, age, sex, sexual orientation (including gender expression or identity), marital status, mental or physical disability, honorably discharged veteran or military status or any other category protected by federal, state or local laws. Our equal employment opportunity (or EEO) policy focuses solely on the talent, hard work, contributions, and actual results achieved by each WatchGuard employee and on the potential of employment candidates to make such contributions. We consider focusing on an employee's protected characteristics rather than on talent, hard work, and actual work results to violate our EEO policy. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we are committed to a diverse workforce. WatchGuard participates in E-verify.

WatchGuard is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. Please let us know if you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability.