Agile Product Owner Job Description: Guide, Sample Template & More

When hiring an Agile product owner, there are a lot of questions to ask. What will be their responsibilities? What kind of experience should they have? Did they go through some kind of training? A lot goes into recruiting and hiring such an expert.

A well-crafted job description will help you find a person with the necessary skills and competencies. The objective of this article is to create an ultimate guide with a template, examples, and useful tips on writing a winning job offer for an Agile product owner.

Agile specialists are needed to improve software quality on a global scale. Their work is dedicated to delivering excellent results within the estimated timeframe, helping teams focus on their tasks and react appropriately to changes in digital projects. That is why positions for Agile specialists are quite well paid and browsed for.

The popularity of this framework and its wide adoption within IT companies proves that it works and supports software teams to do their jobs better. It values teamwork, productivity, flexibility, and is open to ideas, even unconventional ones. An enterprise that wants to thrive in this industry needs employees that are familiar with Agile on board. We’re here to help our readers find them!

However, today we focus strictly on an Agile product owner role. This is a strongly specific job title. Being a product owner can be one of the most rewarding jobs in the world of IT. They are in charge of coordinating various business units, creating and managing road maps, as well as being aware of stakeholders’ and customers’ expectations. The main task here is to create a vision of what the end product should look like, while always taking into account all parties’ needs and requirements. With an Agile setup, the product owner is a crucial figure in the development process.

It’s obvious that finding the right talent is essential to having every project in place and making it outstanding for your business partners. As a recruiter, you need to take a closer look at each candidate and pick someone that will be compatible with your company’s culture and extremely detail-oriented, decisive, and confident with their skills. With all the information you will find in this article, it will be a piece of cake. You will find your next dream product owner employee in no time. Let’s go!

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Sample Agile Product Owner Job Description Template

This template provides an easy-to-use basis for creating a job description for your company. It’s a starting point, so feel free to revise and customize its text to make it more adjusted to your organization’s needs and style.

Agile Product Owner, Engineering Department (Remote)

ABC is hiring! We are a software house specializing in digital web and mobile products for the automotive, healthcare, and retail sectors. Our work was rewarded countless times by industry specialists because we always deliver quality code and exquisite design. We are also wild about cats, so there’s that.

Now we're looking for an Agile product owner who will be responsible for the success of the product and is accountable to the business, customers, and team members. The role includes setting the vision and roadmap for the product, balancing customer requirements against technical feasibility and product cost constraints.

The Agile product owner will work closely with the Scrum Master to plan sprints and releases, and with the development team to set priorities. They will also work closely with QA to guarantee quality, performance, and user experience are effectively tested.

What You’ll Do:
• Defining and delivering high-quality products by working with developers, designers, testers, product managers, and other stakeholders
• Helping developers understand what needs to be built and why it’s important to do so
• Working with the development team to define the scope of each feature or user story and ensuring it’s aligned with market needs
• Maintaining an ordered backlog of prioritized items that need to be developed in the next sprint
• Actively participating in grooming sessions to break down epics into user stories
• Accepting or rejecting completed work from the team based on acceptance criteria
• Managing stakeholder expectations and ensuring everyone is on the same page
• Performing demos regularly and collecting feedback from stakeholders/users

What We Offer:
• Fantastic company retreats, parties, and events (BBQ on our office patio every first Friday of the month!)
• All the tools, software, and training you need to do your job perfectly
• Dental, vision, mental health, and general healthcare insurance
• 401(k) and retirement plans
• Paid time off and parental leave
• Gym membership
• Let us know what you need. We’ll see what we can do!

Interested?
Hit the apply button below. Send us your resume and tell us a little bit about yourself. We really want to get to know you, and if we like what we see, you'll get invited to an interview within 3 days of your application. Good luck!

As you can see, there are many things you can include in a job description, but it’s not all of them! Now we dive deeper into the guidelines for writing compelling JDs. With our advice, you will find your new Agile product owner in no time.

Check out our entire set of tech job descriptions and choose the one which fits your hiring needs best:

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How to Write an Agile Product Owner Job Description

In this part of the article, we break down every section of a job description that you can use in your posting. That doesn’t mean that you have to use them all if you don’t feel it’s necessary. However, with this list, you will be able to pick the elements that are crucial for giving candidates all the information they might need before they apply.

1. Job title

The first thing to consider when writing a job description for an Agile Product Owner is what you want to call the person who will be taking the role. In many organizations, the Product Owner works with multiple teams at once, so it might be better to call them a Product Manager or Director of Product rather than a Product Owner. It all depends on your organization and how the role will work within it.

This article is dedicated to the Agile product owner position, but we always encourage our readers to analyze their requirements and adjust the title to the position. It’s the first thing your potential candidates will see, so it should say as much as possible about the role. You can also add details like industry, work model (hybrid, remote), seniority level, or location.

2. About the company

An effective “About the company” section should be brief and attention-grabbing. It also has to provide insight into what makes your business unique. Consider including:

• Highlights of your history
• Your mission statement
• A list of awards or accolades you’ve won
• Details about your company culture
• The number of employees you have and where they’re located

This section should give candidates a glimpse into what your company does, what you value, and how you engage with employees and customers. Writing an effective “About the company” part can help you turn every job description into a powerful marketing tool that helps you tell your story and connect with applicants.

We like to share examples to show you what we mean. Here’s a sample senior agile product owner job description from Xylem, who got quite creative about their company summary (via Jobvite):

Xylem |ˈzīləm|

1) The tissue in plants that brings water upward from the roots;
2) a leading global water technology company.

We’re a global team unified in a common purpose: creating advanced technology solutions to the world’s water challenges. Developing new technologies that will improve the way water is used, conserved, and re-used in the future is central to our work. Our products and services move, treat, analyze, monitor and return water to the environment, in public utility, industrial, residential and commercial building services settings. Xylem also provides a leading portfolio of smart metering, network technologies and advanced analytics solutions for water, electric and gas utilities. In more than 150 countries, we have strong, long-standing relationships with customers who know us for our powerful combination of leading product brands and applications expertise with a strong focus on developing comprehensive, sustainable solutions.

3. Role summary

This should be a short paragraph explaining the role within the Agile team. It’s important to set expectations clearly, especially if your Agile product owner will be responsible for managing a backlog of work and not just writing user stories.

This section should be approximately three to four sentences long and describe the role in detail. It should also explain why the Agile product owner is needed and what their main responsibilities are. Start with a summary that says what the role is supposed to do. The next sentence can cover the responsibilities and duties that are unique to this position. Then you can talk about what makes your Agile team special and what are their needs.

For a great example, we’ll turn once again to the aforementioned job description for senior agile product owner from Xylem:

The Role: Sensus, a Xylem brand, is seeking highly motivated, experienced and enthusiastic Software Product Owner to guide the agile development of key parts of the AMI / AMR product space.  The Software Product Owner will work Product Management to maintain a vision for their solutions and is responsible for communicating and executing on that vision with the engineering team. Working closely with architects, product management, UX and development teams to ensure that business, quality and functional goals are met with each product release, the Product Owner is responsible for translating the product vision into prioritized requirements and running agile ceremonies to deliver desired client and internal outcome with outstanding usability and quality. The Product Owner is a key decision maker, along with the Product Owner Manager and Product Management, on priorities and design decisions, and works to ensure that all stakeholders are aligned at each stage of the development lifecycle.

The ideal candidate is comfortable working with diverse, geographically distributed teams in both large, established organizations and more startup-like environments. You have innate curiosity and deep empathy: by speaking with someone for half an hour, you can understand their core concerns, motivations, and what would be necessary to create value for them. You are passionate about building game-changing software with the experience to back it up and excited to apply your skills in order to revolutionize how one of the earth’s most precious resources is managed and delivered.

4. Agile product owner responsibilities

This section of your Agile product owner job description can be the most important one for attracting the right candidates.

The ideal future employee for this position is someone who understands how to manage a project and how to organize a team, from the top down. They need to be able to keep the team on track and up-to-date on their progress. Most importantly, they need to be able to understand that their job is about more than getting the product out. It’s about delivering something that will provide revenue.

This means that you’ll want to put a lot of focus into this section of your job description. Try to write all the expectations in a form of a list with single sentences describing each responsibility. It will be easier to read, and the candidate will be able to tell if they are able to meet all the points.

Here’s an example from a WFH senior agile product owner from Evernorth, Cigna Corporation’s health services segment, via their website:

Major Duties:

• Works with business/project stakeholders to identify business needs and use that as input into documenting application/system scope and requirements documentation with the goal of ensuring that scope and solutions support short and long term company objectives and needs.

• Collaboratively works with development leads and architects during scope, requirements, and design processes to fully document scope, requirements, and design related to the business need, and estimate work effort to implement scope.

• Prepares detailed scope/requirements documentation along with priority designations that development teams will use to plan, develop, test and implement application/system functionality.

• Acts as expert resource and scope/requirements lead to development teams in all phases of the development and implementation process.

• Coordinates activities with other IT and Business organizations to ensure successful development and implementation of assigned work.

• Has full technical knowledge of all phases of application/system scope definition and requirement analysis.

• Analyzes and revises existing system logic difficulties and documentation as necessary.

• Great communicator with ability to summarize complex technical topics for all stakeholders and varying levels of the organization.

• Provide systems expertise to system users, business partners, and other internal/external customers including trouble shooting issues, as well as, identifying and correcting inefficiencies.

• Provides input for test strategies and plans; ensures test strategies cover business and system scenarios and owns signing off on plan

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5. Must-haves and nice-to-haves

Must-have requirements are often specified using a concrete list of keywords. This part of a job description usually focuses on the main tasks that will be done on a daily basis by your future Agile product owner. A must-have section is a perfect spot to include non-negotiable skills, such as a degree or certification, years of experience, or specific technical abilities.

Nice-to-haves, on the other hand, is a great place to include skills that would be helpful in this position but aren’t mandated. These may be skills you can teach on the job or ones that could help set an applicant apart from other candidates. This section also can include soft skills that might support your candidate’s work with the team and even some fun points. For example, being a dog person or a board games enthusiast can support the new employee’s onboarding into your company’s culture.

As always, we have an example for you, this one from an agile product owner job description at Haverty Furniture (via their company careers page):

Must Have

• Results-oriented focus 

• 1-2 years of Product Owner experience in an Agile environment 

• In-depth knowledge of Scrum and Agile Software Development Methodology 

• Experience with an Agile tool such as Rally or Jira 

• High motivation for success 

• Excellent oral and written communication 

• Ability to meet timelines and remove roadblocks 

• Bachelor’s degree 

We Value


• Experience in software development life cycle 

• Knowledge of SAP and Infor ERP systems 

• Soft skills to manage a team

6. Education and certificates

This is where you list the academic qualifications you think are necessary for a successful hire. Include any required formal education. Because you want someone passionate about your product, including a degree related to your field is a great idea. Mention specific degrees that are important to the position and how much experience you’re looking for.

Also, remember about relevant certifications you expect your candidate to have. If you want applicants to have an Agile-related training certificate, let them know. You might even include certifications that aren’t specific to the role, but that could be helpful to the person filling it, like Certified Scrum Master (CSM).

7. Working time and location

You might want to work out how much time your new Agile product owner will need to dedicate to their role, and whether they’ll be expected to work on-site or remotely.

Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself before posting a job offer:

• What sort of hours do you expect the Agile product owner to work?
• How many days a week will they need to be working?
• Do you want them to be available outside core working hours?
• Should they be available at the office during core working hours?
• Will they need to travel as part of their role?

All these details are crucial for candidates because they need to adjust their schedules. Not everyone will be able to work for your company if you expect unusual working hours.

8. Salary and benefits

Start this section by giving the total compensation range for the position of an Agile product owner. Then, you can break down how much of that is salary and how much of that is a bonus, equity, or other compensation types, provided that it applies to your company. This approach makes job seekers feel more comfortable applying because they can quickly determine if their salary expectations are in line with what you’re offering.

The benefits package can include:

• 401(k) and retirement plans
• Healthcare, dental, vision, and mental insurance
• Tuition reimbursement
• Paid time off
• Parental leave
• Software and hardware
• Training budget
• Gym membership
• Access to internal library
• and more!

9. What else to include in your product owner job description?

All the sections we discussed above are not the only ones used in job descriptions. You can add more if you want to. Here are some that are considered useful:

Ideal candidate: A few sentences focused on the main skills and responsibilities of your perfect future employee.

Looking ahead: Letting know the applicant what should they achieve within a month, three months, and six months from hiring.

Legal disclosure: All the necessities about data processing, work permits, visas, as well as your non-discrimination policy.

How to apply: A simple instruction on how to send applications will help you get your recruitment process in order.

Point of contact: If candidates have questions or problems, they can reach out to your HR rep.

Company culture: Showcasing how you work as a team will help the applicants identify with your organization before they hit that apply button.

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Tips for Writing a Job Description for an Agile Product Owner

1. Make it inclusive

Creating an inclusive job description means that you are creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable applying for the position. This means you cannot discriminate against any group of people or individuals. Writing an inclusive job description allows you to attract great talent from a variety of backgrounds.

Use gender-neutral language. Avoid focusing on physical appearance or individual choices. Also, ditch unnecessary, overblown requirements, as people won’t feel like they would never meet them.

2. Speak personally

Instead of saying:

A perfect Agile product owner candidate knows…

Try:

You will be a perfect candidate for our agile product owner position if you know…

Trust us, it makes a difference when you speak to your candidate like it’s a conversation.

3. Format your job post

Basic formatting rules apply not only to blog posts and website content but also to job postings. It makes them easy to read and scan for the most crucial information. Bold the title and essentials, use bullet points for big lists of requirements or benefits, and divide paragraphs to avoid big blocks of text.

4. Include “how to apply” instructions

Let potential Agile product owners know how exactly should they apply and what they have to send. This will help you organize the process. Instead of getting resumes and cover letters in multiple places, you will receive them via a dedicated form or one platform of your choice.

5. Add a CTA

Towards the end of your job offer, add a call-to-action (CTA). It can be a simple sentence like “Apply now” or “Send your resume to…”.

You can also be more elaborate and, for example, state the date before which resumes should be sent. Make the CTA simple and clear, but also specific, so the candidates know exactly what to do.

We hope that with our advice, you will find a suitable Agile product owner for your company in no time. Good luck!

You can also try Arc, your shortcut to the world’s best remote talent:

⚡️ Access 350,000 top developers, designers, and marketers
⚡️ Vetted and ready to interview
⚡️ Freelance or full-time

Try Arc and hire top talent now →