Business Analyst / Product Owner (Airline)

About the Company

Cognizant is a top-tier provider of IT services, consulting, and business process outsourcing globally. With headquarters in Teaneck, New Jersey, and a workforce exceeding 340,000 as of January 2025, Cognizant is publicly listed on NASDAQ and included in the NASDAQ-100, S&P 500, Forbes Global 1000, and Fortune 500 indices. The company is recognized as one of the world's fastest-growing and top-performing corporations.

About Cognizant Consulting

In today's digital age, companies must operate with exceptional speed and deliver highly personalized experiences for exceptional customer satisfaction, all while maintaining tight cost controls. Cognizant's consulting team brings together expertise across strategy, design, technology, and domain insights to drive transformative change in processes, infrastructure, and user experiences. This approach focuses on aligning organizational aspirations with the unique needs of customers and employees, fostering trust and value.

Role Overview

This position reports to the Senior Product Manager and serves as the Product Owner responsible for defining and prioritizing user stories in the agile team backlog. The Product Owner advocates for the customer by working closely with the Product Manager to shape vision and roadmap, ensuring that product deliveries meet quality standards and acceptance criteria. This core Agile team member works across multiple scrum teams to clarify required functionalities and features for each development iteration.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the Senior Product Manager to influence the product strategy, vision, and roadmap.
• Manage and prioritize the team backlog during Iteration Planning, coordinating cross-team dependencies and approving final iteration plans.
• Regularly refine backlog items with the team—describing, estimating, and prioritizing tasks for clarity and efficiency.
• Ensure scrum teams fully comprehend features and functionalities to be delivered in each sprint.
• Detail features and user stories, including defining acceptance criteria and tests.
• Accept delivered features and stories by validating they meet acceptance criteria, passing acceptance tests, and conforming to the Definition of Done.
• Lead demos showcasing critical features to stakeholders.
• Host iteration retrospectives to identify improvements that enhance team velocity and quality.
• Maintain and deliver system training materials for new rollouts and refresher sessions as necessary.

Qualifications and Experience

• A minimum of 3 years' experience in product development is required.
• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field is preferred.
• Professional certification such as Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), SAFe Product Owner, or equivalent is advantageous.
• Demonstrated experience with Agile methodologies including Scrum, SAFe, and Lean Portfolio Management.
• Proven track record of defining, launching, and delivering successful products.
• Strong technical background combined with operational business acumen and solution-driving capability.
• Experience setting product vision and strategy for technical products.
• Excellent communication and coordination skills to work effectively with multiple teams across the organization.