Senior Product Owner

Department:

Technology

Our Company Promise

We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.

Job Description:

As a Senior Product Owner, you'll define the vision, strategy, and roadmap for digital capabilities supporting Material Stores, Supply Chain, Parts Planning, and Reliability. You'll partner with Business and Technology Leaders to deliver AI-enabled, data-driven solutions that improve operational efficiency, inventory visibility, maintenance planning, and decision-making. Leveraging a strong technical background, you'll work directly with Engineering and Data Teams to shape scalable products, advance digital transformation initiatives, and ensure solutions align with business priorities, data strategy, and long-term operational goals.

This addition positions the Product Owner as someone who not only understands the business and product strategy but also drives the evolution of engineering practices and AI adoption across the software development lifecycle, which aligns well with your Engineering Excellence framework.

Additional Details

This role allows for voluntary remote work for the majority of your working time within the Dallas-Fort Worth area, with occasional on-site presence at our Corporate Campus for training, meetings, and business needs. This role may also require limited travel for business purposes.

U.S. citizenship or current authorization to work in the U.S. required and no current or future work authorization sponsorship available.

We’re committed to fair hiring practices and to making employment decisions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, military or veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other legally protected characteristics.

Responsibilities

Provide innovation and the end-to-end launch of integrated solutions/products across multiple Agile Teams

Collaborate with Business Partners and Product Managers to co-develop a roadmap and drive products and features from concept to launch in a fast-paced environment across multiple Agile Teams

Work with senior stakeholders and customers across the organization to inform the product vision, strategy, features, and prioritization

Translate product roadmap features into well-defined product requirements including features, user stories, and acceptance test criteria across multiple products or complex solutions

Turn data insights into products with actionable outcomes to the ultimate customer

Oversee the design, construction, and implementation of integrated solutions ensuring functionality meets business requirements

Coach and mentor other Product Owners across multiple Agile Teams to build, refine, prioritize and maintain their Team backlogs

Review, approve, and drive iteration content by prioritizing user stories and accept user stories as complete

Define and prioritize solutions to complex issues and effectively communicate dependencies, risks, issues and cope for complex solutions

Coach and mentor Product Owners and Scrum Masters in the successful delivery of Scrum ceremonies such as iteration planning, iteration reviews, and demos

May perform other job duties as directed by Employee's Leaders

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

Ability to make decisions independently and demonstrate skills to support, guide, and mentor other Product Owners in the same business domain

Ability to understand technical issues across multiple business systems and how business areas interact in order to drive toward the best solutions

Ability to be analytical and problem solve with a high attention to detail

Ability to show initiative by anticipating risks, issues and opportunities, and escalating them accordingly, while mentoring and coaching

Skilled in presentation, facilitation, communication, and negotiation across multiple stakeholders and levels in the organization

Ability to search for opportunities, focus on business value and the Return On Investment and act proactively on possible risks and threats

Ability to effectively manage complex tasks that are not well defined

Ability to balance priority, risk, value, learning opportunities and dependencies and effectively uses product / Team backlog to manage them

Ability to effectively communicate complex problems, risks, progress, or new ideas to diverse Stakeholders and influence direction

Knowledge of industry trends and new technologies in order to provide innovative product guidance to the Business or Product Manager

Expertise in Agile including the value and principles, and how they are applied in enterprise environments

Education

Required: High School Diploma or GED

Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information systems or similar fields of study or equivalent advanced level experience

Experience

Required: Advanced-level experience, seasoned and specialized knowledge in:

Agile and Scrum software development methodologies

Business analysis, project management or software development delivering enterprise products and solutions

Preferred: Experience in the following

Product Management or Product Ownership experience delivering enterprise technology solutions.

Technical Product Owner background with full-stack development experience, able to read SQL, understand API contracts, data pipeline logic, and engage directly with system architecture rather than relying solely on engineers to translate technical constraints.

Define and execute the product vision, strategy, and multi-year roadmap aligned with business priorities.

Partner with Supply Chain, Material Stores, Reliability, Engineering, and Operations to identify opportunities and prioritize product investments.

Lead business process discovery and transformation workshops to translate operational needs into scalable digital solutions.

Drive data strategy by partnering with Enterprise Data teams to improve data quality, governance, analytics, and AI readiness – with the technical fluency to personally validate data pipeline outputs and diagnose data quality or model reliability issues.

Own and prioritize the product backlog, define product requirements, and collaborate with engineering teams to deliver high-value capabilities using Agile methodologies.

Measure product success through business outcomes, user adoption, operational efficiency, and continuous improvement.

Experience leading digital products supporting Supply Chain, Material Stores, Inventory Management, Reliability, or Maintenance Operations.

Proven ability to define product vision, roadmaps, and prioritize backlogs using Agile methodologies.

Manage and prioritize the product backlog, ensuring epics, features, user stories, and acceptance criteria are clearly defined and development ready.

Experience facilitating business process discovery workshops and translating business capabilities into product requirements.

Experience partnering with Enterprise Data teams to define data strategy, governance, analytics, and AI-ready data products.

Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and strategic leadership skills, with the ability to translate fluently in both directions between business stakeholders and engineering teams.

• •Champion the use of AI assistants and emerging AI capabilities to enhance productivity, decision-making, and user experience.
• •Experience driving Engineering Excellence initiatives, including DevEx, AI-assisted engineering, built-in quality, application observability, and engineering self-service