Senior Product Owner - Partnerships

About the company

Lula is a South-Africa-based fintech platform that provides fast, data-driven working-capital loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

About this role

OVERALL PURPOSE We’re seeking a highly motivated and experienced Senior Product Owner with a solid understanding of financial services to join our growing fintech. You will work alongside our Partnerships team creating world-class funding journeys and products for our partners and affiliates. This role will see you collaborate with cross-functional teams to define and manage our product backlog, ensuring we deliver a best-in-class product. Working collaboratively with Business Development, Product Design, Marketing, Data Science & Engineering, you will be responsible for our product and its end-to-end features. We’re looking to build a high-quality, beautiful end-to-end digital experience, helping SMEs thrive in a tough market. RESPONSIBILITIES Value Delivery: Driving the delivery of Lula’s roadmap Creating clear and actionable feature specifications by gathering requirements, defining functionality, and setting goals in line with Lula’s product requirements definition standards. Collaborating with Lula’s Tech teams (Architecture, Engineering, Design, etc.) to iteratively and quickly deliver product functionality that accomplishes our goals Ensuring the reliability and quality of product releases meet our standards and our customer expectations. Customer Insights: Gaining a deep understanding of our customer’s needs and what progress looks like for them Analysing and using data and product analytics to generate actionable insights and turning these into measurable and impactful business outcomes Gathering and using customer feedback to understand how users engage with our products to drive meaningful outcomes for the business Working with UX and UI designers to build end-to-end journeys that ensure we’re generating value for our customers Collaboration & Alignment: Aligning our bigger picture and strategy to daily work and deliverables Driving business impact by mapping product functionality and commitments to the strategic objectives of our channels and the business Defining a clear backlog of highly prioritised features and initiatives that deliver against our business vision Collaborating and building excellent relationships Proactively working with stakeholders to factor their requirements into product decisions Influencing peers and direct reports with the goal of enabling them to successfully deliver on their product areas, to continuously grow their product craft and deliver meaningful business outcomes Influencing and persuading Lula’s senior managers and executives to help achieve goals, remove blockers and deliver meaningful business outcomes Partner Management: Work closely with our Business Development team to grow our partnerships and affiliates, including onboarding new partners/affiliates and growing our existing partners/affiliates Manage relationships with external partners alongside our Business Development team Work with external partners to scope and prioritise technical solutions THE SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE WE’RE LOOKING FOR Bachelor degree in a relevant field or equivalent 5+ years of working experience as a Product Owner 1-2 years experience as a Senior Product Owner Product owner certification an added bonus Experience with prototyping, testing, and validating product hypotheses Managing and building out a backlog with a focus on iterative and continuous delivery Experience building products iteratively by applying lean principles and focusing on MVPs Hands-on experience working with Engineering teams in an Agile environment with an understanding of agile development process (Scrum in particular) Excellent communication and collaboration skills Technical acumen and genuine passion for technology Understanding of core concepts related to UI/UX design Experience with product management tools such as JIRA, Confluence, Mixpanel, Segment, etc. a plus