Technical Product Owner – Platform

Role Overview

The Technical Product Owner (TPO) – Platform acts as a bridge between Product Management, application teams, and Platform Engineering. The role translates product strategy and team requirements into detailed, technically sound work that can be executed by platform engineering, embedded within the platform organization.

Responsibilities

• Requirement Translation & Alignment
  • Translate product strategy and high-level requirements into user stories, acceptance criteria, estimates, and technical specifications.
  • Act as the primary liaison across product managers, engineers, architects, and stakeholders.
  • Validate technical feasibility and align requirements with platform architecture, engineering standards, and operational realities.
• Backlog Ownership & Prioritization
  • Maintain and refine the engineering backlog so stories are well-defined, prioritized, and development-ready.
  • Prioritize based on product objectives, technical value, and platform health (reliability, maintainability, security).
  • Balance new feature enablement with lifecycle work (modernization, tech debt reduction, performance improvements).
• Execution & Delivery
  • Drive agile ceremonies with engineering teams (refinement, planning, story reviews) to ensure high-quality requirements.
  • Clarify edge cases, workflows, integrations, and technical nuances during development.
  • Coordinate cross-team dependencies to help teams deliver commitments.
• Platform Technical Understanding
  • Develop deep understanding of platform architecture, cloud infrastructure, developer workflows, and operational constraints.
  • Partner with architects, SREs, and engineering leads; advocate for scalability, resiliency, observability, and cost optimization.
• Stakeholder Communication
  • Provide progress updates, risks, and trade-offs to product and engineering leadership.
  • Ensure alignment between product strategy, engineering capacity, and release timelines.
  • Represent engineering considerations during scope and priority discussions with Product Management.

Requirements

• 3+ years in a Product Owner / Technical Product Owner / Business Analyst role supporting engineering teams.
• 3+ years as a software development engineer.
• Strong understanding of cloud platforms, infrastructure services, and platform engineering concepts.
• Experience translating business requirements into detailed technical stories.
• Excellent collaboration and communication across technical and non-technical teams.
• Agile development knowledge.
• Travel up to 10% may be required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting internal developer platforms or platform engineering teams.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, automation, and cloud security.
• Relevant cloud certifications or Agile Product Owner certification.

Location / Work Arrangement

• Remote, with expectation to relocate to onsite Houston at the candidate’s own expense by Q1 2027 (approximate timeframe, subject to change).