Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies, Workers Compensation Division, has an opening for a high-level Technical Product Owner in its Walnut Creek Office. The TPO 3 is key in driving complex IT product development and aligning business objectives with technical capabilities. This technical professional will be responsible for managing the entire product lifecycle, from high-level vision to technical execution, while working closely with cross-functional teams, including software developers, architects, and operations.
Area of Focus: Big Data, Data Science, Data Analytics, SaS, Actuary
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
PRODUCT BACKLOG OWNERSHIP & REFINEMENT
- Owns the product roadmap and strategy, ensuring it aligns with business objectives and technical constraints.
- Works with senior management and stakeholders to define the product vision, goals, and long-term direction.
- Makes strategic decisions regarding trade-offs between product features, technical debt, and resource allocation.
TECHNICAL PRODUCT BACKLOG MANAGEMENT
- Leads and manages the entire product backlog, ensuring high-quality user stories, epics, and technical tasks are properly prioritized.
- Works closely with technical teams to write detailed, technically sound user stories, ensuring alignment with system architecture and business needs.
- Incorporates complex technical requirements, such as performance optimization, scalability, and security into the backlog.
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAM COLLABORATION
- Acts as key liaison between business, development, DevOps, security, and architecture teams to ensure alignment of product goals and technical execution.
- Leads technical discussions on system architecture, API design, integrations, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps pipelines.
- Provides technical guidance to development teams, offering solutions to challenges and ensuring technical feasibility.
STAKEHOLDER COMMUNICATION & REPORTING
- Provides clear and regular updates to senior stakeholders on the product's technical progress, key risks, and performance metrics.
- Collaborates with external vendors or partners as necessary to integrate third-party solutions into the product ecosystem.
- Ensures that stakeholders understand the technical implications of decisions, timelines, and resource constraints.
ADVANCED TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS GATHERING & ANALYSIS
- Deeply understands and documents technical workflows, APIs, data models, and infrastructure requirements.
- Drives the integration of third-party systems, APIs, and microservices architecture into the product.
- Leads discussions on technical feasibility, scalability, and architectural design with engineers and architects.
- Collaborates with the engineering team to translate complex technical and system requirements into clear, actionable product features.
- Understands and documents technical workflows, data models, APIs, and integrations.
- Evaluates and recommends tools, frameworks, and technologies that support objectives.
PRODUCT VISION & STRATEGY SUPPORT
- Understands the product vision and contribute to creation of short- and long-term product roadmaps.
- Assists in identifying key business and technical metrics for product success.
- Contributes to defining and refining the product vision, strategy, and roadmap, incorporating feedback from key stakeholders.
- Conducts market and competitive analysis to inform product decisions and identify new technical opportunities.
- Drive continuous improvement of the product by leveraging metrics, user feedback, and emerging technology trends.
AGILE SUPPORT
- Supports Agile best practices, leading sprint planning, backlog refinement, stand-ups, and retrospectives.
- Ensures development teams follow Agile principles and deliver continuous improvements through CI/CD pipelines.
- Actively removes blockers and manages risks during the development process, optimizing team productivity and product delivery timelines.
QUALITY ASSURANCE & PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION
- Collaborates with QA teams to ensure that testing strategies are comprehensive, covering functional, regression, and performance testing.
- Defines and oversees technical acceptance criteria ensuring product features meet both functional and non-functional requirements (e.g., load times, reliability, security).
- Continuously monitors product performance post-launch, identifying opportunities for optimization and technical improvement.
PRODUCT LAUNCH & POST-LAUNCH SUPPORT
- Coordinates product releases, working closely with release management, DevOps, and support teams.
- Monitors and tracks the performance of product features post-launch and implements necessary improvements.
- Provides post-release support to address technical issues and feedback from users and stakeholders.
ON-PREMISES, HYBRID, AND CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS
- Works with business applications across various environments, including on-premises, hybrid, and cloud systems.
- Works with the infrastructure and cloud teams to ensure that application environments are stable, secure, and meet business performance expectations.
- Supports the transition of applications from the on-premises environments to cloud or hybrid architectures, working closely with senior IT leadership on cloud migration strategies.
- Ensures proper governance and performance monitoring for applications in all environments, proactively identifying areas for optimization.
STAKEHOLDER COLLABORATION
- Acts as liaison between business users, IT teams, and external vendors to ensure that applications meet the needs of the organization and align with business goals.
- Facilitates communication between technical teams and business stakeholders, ensuring clear understanding of project timelines, deliverables, and expectations.
- Works closely with other IT managers and teams to ensure successful integration of business applications with other enterprise systems.
RISK & COMPLIANCE
- Ensures that business applications comply with industry regulations and internal security standards, including SOX, PCI-DSS, and other financial sector regulations.
- Works with the cybersecurity team to ensure applications are secured against potential threats and vulnerabilities.
- Supports procedures for regular audits, risk assessments, and disaster recovery plans for critical applications.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field. Master's degree a plus.
- CERTIFICATIONS: Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), or SAFe certifications highly preferred.
- EXPERIENCE: Required: A minimum of 7 years of experience in IT product management, with a minimum of 3 years of hands-on experience managing technical products. Strong experience with CI/CD pipelines, Dev Ops tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab, Terraform), and infrastructure automation. Hands-on experience with API design, web services, and integrating third-party systems. Experience with cloud infrastructure management, including containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and serverless architectures. Preferred: Experience with microservices architecture, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and modern cloud-native applications.
TECHNICAL SKILLS/KNOWLEDGE
- In-depth understanding of Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) and demonstrated experience working closely with engineering teams.
- Extensive technical knowledge in software development, cloud technologies (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud), microservices, and APIs.
- Solid understanding of system architecture, security, database management (SQL/NoSQL), and distributed systems.
- Strong knowledge of automation tools, monitoring, and logging platforms.
WHAT WE OFFER
- Work-Life Balance
- Work From Home Program (up to 2 days per week upon eligibility)
- Modern Office Setting
- Free On-Site Fitness Facility
- Free downtown shuttle route
- Two-minute walk from Walnut Creek BART Station
- Three-minute car ride from CA-24 and I-680
- Free On-Site Garage Parking
BENEFITS
- Paid Time Off
- Paid Holidays
- Retirements Savings Match
- Group Health Insurance (Medical, Dental, and Vision)
- Life and AD&D Insurance
- Long Term Disability Insurance
- Accident and Critical Illness Insurance
- Flexible Savings Accounts
- Paid Community Volunteer Day
- Employee Assistance Program
- Tuition Reimbursement Program
- Employee Referral Program
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Program
ABOUT US
With more than 50 years in business, BHHC has grown from a regional organization to a national insurance group, offering insurance products from coast to coast. Relationships are the cornerstone of our culture, and we believe in doing the right thing. That means we invest in our business in every way possible to deliver on our mission and demonstrate that people are what powers our success. Our commitment to financial strength and integrity means our customers can rest assured that we will be there when it counts.
At BHHC we embrace diversity and foster an environment where our people can be their authentic selves. Our differences make us stronger and better together, which fosters a harmonious workplace—something we truly value. We’ve created an approachable and collaborative atmosphere. Here you’ll find a welcoming workplace where everyone can feel valued, supported, and inspired to do great work. Together, we raise the bar by being curious, remaining customer-focused, and operating with integrity.
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Last updated on Oct 11, 2024