Lead Product Owner

CLA is a top 10 national professional services firm where our purpose is to create opportunities every day, for our clients, our people, and our communities through industry-focused wealth advisory, digital, audit, tax, consulting, and outsourcing services. Even with more than 8,500 people, 130 U.S. locations, and a global reach, we promise to know you and help you.

CLA is dedicated to building a culture that invites different beliefs and perspectives to the table, so we can truly know and help our clients, communities, and each other.

Our Perks:

• Flexible PTO (designed to offer flexible time away for you!)
• Up to 12 weeks paid parental leave
• Paid Volunteer Time Off
• Mental health coverage
• Quarterly Wellness stipend
• Fertility benefits
• Complete list of benefits here

CLA is growing and seeking to hire an experienced Lead Product Owner to join our talented Information Technology team. The position offers growth, flexibility and a collaborative work environment.

This role drives strategic product outcomes through full-stack ownership in an Agile environment, integrating business, user, and technical priorities to deliver measurable value aligned with CLA's business objectives. This role optimizes the value stream, streamlining processes to deliver measurable customer outcomes. It demands hands-on leadership across discovery, requirements, delivery, and optimization, while mentoring teams and fostering a data-driven, user-focused culture. Collaborates with architecture, engineering, UX, and business stakeholders to ensure technical feasibility, scalability, and compliance, balancing short-term wins with long-term vision.

How you'll create opportunities in this Lead Product Owner role:

Continuous Discovery

Validate user problems, operational pain points, and strategic opportunities using qualitative and quantitative inputs, ensuring alignment with business outcomes.

Partner with product leader, business, engineering, architecture, and data leaders to shape the roadmap, identify cross-team impacts, and understand enterprise dependencies.

Convert research insights into structured hypotheses, refined problem statements, and actionable backlog items with confirmed feasibility and measurable business value.

Translate user insights and production feedback into iterative improvements through coordination with UX, engineering, and QA.

Requirements/Backlog Management

Develop product requirements documents (PRDs) and requirements that cover functional and non-functional needs, including scalability, security, data integrity, accessibility (ADA/WCAG), and operational constraints.

Break down complex initiatives into epics, features, and stories with clear acceptance criteria, technical dependencies, and alignment to the Definition of Ready.

Drive prioritization using value-based frameworks (MoSCoW, Value-Effort analysis, RICE) , incorporating ROI, risk, technical debt, architectural readiness, and business urgency.

Define success metrics for adoption, viability, efficiency, and business value, and integrate insights back into backlog refinement and roadmap evolution.

Continuous Delivery and Execution

Lead full-stack delivery from Alpha through GA (general availability), ensuring that solutions meet business objectives, quality thresholds, and operational readiness.

Partner with engineering and QA to verify technical feasibility, compliance, reliability, and environment readiness across the full release path.

Lead Agile execution through planning, iteration delivery, retrospectives, and coordination with Release Train Engineers, Scrum Masters, and program/project managers.

Surface and resolve blockers, manage cross-team dependencies, and align delivery teams to maintain predictable progress and measurable value.

Technical & Solution Alignment

Work with engineers and architects to ensure feasibility across data schemas, automation workflows, APIs, integration patterns, and enterprise architecture standards.

Evaluate technical tradeoffs between speed, complexity, long-term maintainability, and architectural runway requirements.

Prioritize technical enablers necessary for scale, reliability, resiliency, and operational excellence across the product portfolio.

Ensure solutions meet expectations for security, auditability, compliance, and performance at enterprise scale.

Stakeholder Collaboration and Cross-Functional Influence

Align business owners, product partners, engineering leaders, and delivery teams on priorities, tradeoffs, and cross-functional decisions.

Use data, customer insights, and impact analysis to secure agreement on roadmap direction and investment sequencing.

Convert stakeholder and user feedback into actionable product work tied to measurable business results.

Communicate progress, risks, and decisions clearly to leadership and cross-functional teams to maintain sustained alignment.

Functional Leadership and Mentorship

Mentor Product Owners in advanced requirements development, backlog strategy, stakeholder management, and outcome-oriented delivery.

Elevate product management capabilities through coaching, framing techniques, structured decision practices, and operational discipline.

Model systems thinking, enterprise awareness, and high-quality product judgment, setting the standard for senior-level product practice.

Performance Optimization and Improvement

Evaluate product performance against defined KPIs, using insights to guide prioritization, roadmap evolution, and investment decisions.

Identify and address adoption, workflow, or performance gaps, driving targeted improvements tied to business impact.

Lead ongoing post-launch optimization through structured learning cycles and continuous improvement practices.

What you will need:

• 6+ years of experience in a Senior Product Owner/Product Manager role, with a proven track record of successful product delivery, is required.
• Bachelor's degree or a combination of relevant experience and training may be considered in lieu of a degree.

Technical Competencies:

Systems Thinking: Integrates business, technical, and user requirements across enterprise systems, synthesizing dependencies to drive scalable, outcome-focused solutions.

Technical Fluency: Guides technical discussions on software engineering, APIs, data integration, and enterprise architectures, ensuring solutions align with business and user needs.

Prioritization Discipline: Drives prioritization using frameworks (e.g., MOSCOW, Value-Effort, RICE, KANO) to balance stakeholder demands, technical constraints, and CLA's OKRs.

User-Centered Design Principles: Guides user-centric product requirements for enterprise applications, leveraging Design Thinking and user research to ensure intuitive, accessible outcomes.

Analytical Acumen: Synthesizes qualitative and quantitative data to drive strategic decisions, validate hypotheses, and optimize product performance against business outcomes.

Agile Execution: Leads dual-track (Discovery & Delivery) Agile processes (Scrum, Lean, SAFe), aligning cross-functional teams to deliver complex integrations with measurable impact.

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Wellness at CLA

To support our CLA family members, we focus on their physical, financial, social, and emotional well-being and offer comprehensive benefit options that include health, dental, vision, 401k and much more.

To view a complete list of benefits click here.