Expert Product Owner

At CN, everyday brings new and exciting challenges. You can expect an interesting environment where you’re part of making sure our business is running optimally and safely―helping keep the economy on track. We provide the kind of paid training and opportunities that long-term careers are built on and we recognize hard workers who strive to make a difference. You will be able to thrive in our close-knit, safety-focused culture working together as ONE TEAM. The careers we offer are meaningful because the work we do matters. Join us!

Job Summary

The Expert Product Owner acts as the SAFe AGILE team’s primary customer advocate, bridging the gap between business needs and technical execution. This role is responsible for continuous evolution of the solution, prioritizing the product backlog to maximize business value, and ensuring alignment with technical architecture.

While the primary focus of this role is Product Ownership, the incumbent must possess strong analytical skills and may be required to fulfill Business Analyst responsibilities as project demands dictate. When required, they will step in to perform detailed requirements elicitation, process modeling, and drafting of technical specifications to ensure the overall cohesion of product requirements. The Expert Product Owner collaborates closely with customers, Product Managers, and development teams throughout the product lifecycle.

Main Responsibilities

1. Product Vision & Backlog Management (Core)

• Own, maintain, prioritize, and commit the team backlog, ensuring work focuses on maximum business value and aligns with the broader product roadmap.

• Act as the "voice of the customer" throughout the development process, balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders.

• Define precise and testable Acceptance Criteria for each user story.

• Define any required Enablers, including exploration, architectural, infrastructure, and compliance enablers.

2. Business Analysis & Requirement Elicitation (As Required)

• When necessary, act as the lead analyst to elicit, analyze, and document complex business requirements using interviews, workshops, and document analysis.

• Perform detailed analysis of existing business processes and rules, creating process flow diagrams (, using BPMN) and data models when required to support development.

• Draft detailed user story specifications, ensuring functional, non-functional, and UX requirements are clearly articulated for the delivery team.

3. Manage Stakeholder & Customer Relations

• Create trusted relationships between I&T and business stakeholders, ensuring clear communication and alignment on product evolution.

• Act as the primary liaison between business units and the development team.

• Work with customers to identify pain points and uncover opportunities for improvement.

4. Support the Agile Delivery Process

• Architecture & Design: Oversee the refinement of user stories, help make trade-off decisions, and ensure solutions align with target architecture.

• Build: Act as the subject matter expert for the delivery team to clarify requirements and ensure development aligns with specifications.

• Testing: Provide input on test data setup, perform UAT testing, and accept user stories on behalf of the customer, validating that Acceptance Criteria are met.

• Ceremonies: Participate actively in all SAFe AGILE ceremonies, solving problems and making decisions to stay on track toward business value commitments.

5. Comply withSAFe AGILE Practice

• Remain up-to-date with CN’s SAFe AGILE practices, processes, and artifacts.

• Facilitate the definition and tracking of key metrics related to the product (, flow, rework, quality).

Requirements

Experience

• Minimum 7-10 years overall work experience.

• Experience in transportation logistic companies.

• Demonstrated core experience in a Product Ownership role.

• Proven experience executing Business Analysis tasks (requirements elicitation, process modeling, and data analysis), with a willingness to perform these duties as needed.

• Software development experience, with I&T or Applied Engineering context.

• Demonstrated experience in engaging senior leaders and other stakeholders to support business decisions.

• Experience in shaping, building, scaling and sustaining products.

• Experience in diverse roles and increasing responsibilities across Business and IT, although a business-only career is acceptable if business roles included sufficient technology focus.

• Experience working with complex systems in large organizations.

Education/Certification/Designation

• Bachelor’s Degree in computer science, business administration or an equivalent degree and experience.

Competencies

• Knows the business and stays current on industry needs.

• Communicates with impact.

• Demonstrates agility and drives change.

• Applies critical thinking.

• Collaborates with others and shares information.

• Identifies needs and finds solutions to create value for all stakeholders.

Skills/Knowledge

• In-depth knowledge and experience of the Product Ownership discipline

• Business acumen, and the ability to communicate with executives, business domain stakeholders and technical staff alike.

• Excellent analytical and technical skills.

• Experience with SW Development methodologies (Agile, Devops, etc.).

• Familiarity with the principles of Design Thinking

• Vision and passion for building great products.

• Experienced in requirements analysis.

This position is posted as a grade 7. For internal candidates, note that the grade level of the position may adjust based on the employee's experience.