Product Owner (278027)

"All candidates must be directly contracted by ASK Consulting on their payroll and cannot be subcontracted. We are unable to provide sponsorship at this moment".

Job Title: Product Owner

Location: Overland Park, KS 66211 Hybrid 2days/week Onsite

Duration: 6+ Months Contract

Pay Rate:$65.21/hr on W2

Job Description:

• Client is seeking a Product Owner to support our Developer Platform team on a 6-month contract engagement.
• This is a technical, execution-focused role centered on two core workstreams:
• 1. evening infrastructure that enables third-party partners and internal teams to subscribe to and consume platform events, and
• 2  API governance and pull request (PR) review processes that maintain code quality, standards compliance, and integration consistency across the enterprise.
• This contractor will embed within existing delivery teams, contribute to active backlogs, and serve as a connective layer between engineering, architecture, and external partner teams.
• The right candidate brings technical fluency, a bias toward execution, and hands-on experience in event-driven systems and API lifecycle management.

Key Responsibilities:

• External Eventing & 3rd Party Integration
• Own the product backlog for external eventing capabilities, including event schema design, partner subscription management, and delivery reliability standards.
• Define and refine requirements for third-party event consumers including webhook delivery, retry logic, filtering, and authentication patterns.
• Collaborate with architecture and engineering to ensure event contracts are versioned, documented, and backward-compatible.
• Engage with external partner teams to understand integration needs and translate them into well-scoped platform requirements.
• Maintain event catalog documentation and partner-facing integration guides.

API Governance & PR Review Process

• Support API governance processes across delivery teams, including review of new API designs for standards compliance (naming conventions, versioning, error handling, security patterns).
• Own or contribute to the PR review workflow for platform integrations coordinating review cadences, defining acceptance criteria for integration PRs, and tracking resolution of flagged issues.
• Partner with engineering leads to define and evolve API design standards, Open API spec requirements, and integration testing gates.
• Identify recurring patterns in PR feedback and translate them into reusable guidelines, templates, or backlog items for standards improvement.
• Ensure cross-team PRs that touch shared platform components follow established branching, review, and merge protocols.
   

Delivery & Agile Execution:

• Maintain a groomed, prioritized backlog across both workstreams; write clear user stories with well-defined acceptance criteria.
• Participate in planning, ceremonies, and cross-team dependency coordination.
• Provide just-in-time story elaboration and unblock engineering teams during active sprints.
• Communicate progress, risks, and blockers to delivery stream leadership on a regular cadence.

Required Qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Product Specialist, Product Analyst, Technical Business Analyst, or similar role ideally with exposure to platform, API, or integration products.
• Demonstrated experience working on technically complex products requiring close collaboration with engineering and architecture teams.
• Ability to read and interpret API specs, event schemas, and technical documentation; comfortable in engineering-heavy environments.
• Strong backlog management skills able to write precise, implementation-ready stories and acceptance criteria without heavy PM oversight.
• Experience participating in or facilitating PR review processes or API governance programs.
• Excellent written communication skills; able to produce clear partner-facing documentation and internal technical specs.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have:

• Hands-on experience with event-driven architecture patterns Kafka, webhooks, pub/sub, event sourcing.
• Familiarity with API design standards and tooling OpenAPI/Swagger specs, Postman, API gateways (Apigee, Kong, or similar).
• Experience with GitHub-based PR workflows, branch protection rules, and CI/CD pipeline integration.
• Background in automotive, SaaS platform, or marketplace technology environments.
• Familiarity with partner/developer portal products or external developer experience programs.
• SAFe Agile experience preferred; ability to operate within an established release train.

Core Competencies:

• Technical Fluency Comfortable operating in engineering-led environments.
• Can engage meaningfully on event schema design, API contract decisions, and PR feedback without needing translation from the team.

Execution Focus Bias toward getting things done.

• Manages backlog with discipline, minimizes ceremony, and keeps teams unblocked.
• Thrives in a contractor context where outcomes matter more than process.

Governance

• Mindset Understands why standards exist and can advocate for them without being rigid.
• Finds pragmatic paths to compliance that don't slow teams down unnecessarily.
• Partner Orientation Communicates clearly with stakeholders.
• Can translate technical platform constraints into partner-friendly language and vice versa.

About ASK: ASK Consulting is an award-winning technology and professional services recruiting firm servicing Fortune 500 organizations nationally. With 5 nationwide offices, two global delivery centers, and employees in 42 states-ASK Consulting connects people with amazing opportunities

ASK Consulting is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all associates.