Are you the one who bridges the chasm between "business outcomes" and "database migrations"? Do you dream in user stories and wake up to prioritize technical debt? Do you believe the how is just as important as the what? Are you interested in how technology will drive the future of education? Then ditch the daily triage routine and join our high-velocity ed-tech engineering organization as Turnitin鈥檚 first Sr. Technical Product Owner (TPO)!
The Engineering Plan team manages the plan and build functions for our products, and we need a seasoned TPO to be the technical conscience and execution powerhouse for a core product which spans multiple engineering teams. This isn't just about managing a queue; it's about driving the technical roadmap that ensures our product meets customer needs and stays resilient for years to come. This person will work closely with multiple teams in both Product and Engineering from across different time zones and countries to ensure technical execution is on track. Turnitin supports a strong work life balance by providing a fully remote working environment; we focus on hunger for delivering for our customers versus the hours we work.
Your Quest: Technical Strategy & Execution
You will be the vital link, the glue, and the primary translator across our cross-functional teams.
Technical Expertise & Strategy (The Architect's Mind)
- System Deep Dive: Master the technical aspects of assigned domain, including system architecture, service mesh, and infrastructure components. You'll contribute to the technical strategy and roadmap, ensuring technical choices align with long-term product health.
- Technical Health Champion: Directly partner with Engineering Leaders to balance new feature delivery with the critical work of system maintenance, security, and performance tuning. You are the voice advocating for proactive technical health.
- Process Ninja: Analyze existing engineering workflows, identifying bottlenecks and proposing improvements to optimize the plan and build phases of our delivery pipeline.
Collaboration & Alignment (The Diplomat's Touch)
- Product Translation: Work with multiple Product Manager(s), each managing a business feature roadmap, to translate their collective strategic vision (e.g., "Narrative: We must launch Feature X") into measurable, outcome-based technical epics.
- Inter-Roadmap Conflict Resolution: Proactively identify and resolve conflicts or resource contention arising from competing demands across different Product Managers' feature roadmaps.
- Scope Whisperer: Advise PMs on scope trade-offs and technical feasibility, using data on team capacity, system dependencies, and risk to drive difficult prioritization conversations across product lines.
- Delivery Visibility: Stay deeply informed on development status and execution detail, empowering the Product Manager(s) with line-of-sight on delivery targets for the features relying on your engineering team.
- Dependency Czar: Take the lead on cross-team coordination, proactively managing and resolving technical and functional dependencies across Engineering, DevOps, and QA to free Engineering Leaders and boost team velocity.
Backlog & Agile Leadership (The Delivery Dynamo)
- Backlog Ownership: Own the team's technical backlog, meticulously synchronizing the work with the team's capacity in partnership with Engineering Leaders.
- Story Mastery: Partner with Technical Lead(s) to break down complex epics into technically feasible, well-designed stories with crystal-clear acceptance criteria.
- Risk & Debt Manager: Rely on your Tech Leads to surface technical risks and debt, and then execute the strategy to prioritize, schedule, and resolve them within the development cycle.
- Priority Management: Support the Technical Lead(s) in ensuring the team stays focused by managing and communicating changes in work priority, often resulting from negotiations with the multiple PMs.
- Agile Conductor: Lead the technical aspects of all Agile events (especially refinement and planning) to ensure the team is focused, technically aligned, and protected from priority shifts.