Product Owner (EMEA)

As a Product Owner/Business Analyst at Willis Towers Watson, you will be part of a highly collaborative scrum team with members on two continents. This is an integral role in product development by ensuring the organization’s needs are articulated in the user story and acceptance criteria consumed by the Agile Scrum Team. You will be key in influencing prioritization decisions in collaboration with Product Managers and fellow Product Owners, lead discovery activities, and ensure clarity of requirements across the software development lifecycle. 

In this role, you will practice fundamentals of requirements gathering, system conceptual design, and scope definition. Furthermore, you will facilitate discussions with stakeholders, and guide the refinement of business requirements into clear, actionable user stories that drive high-quality feature outcomes. In addition, you may assist in conducting functional and usability testing to ensure that the Agile Scrum Team’s deliverables meet the business requirements and needs. This role works with Willis Towers Watson’s proprietary and/or industry-leading systems and applications and ensures that these are designed and built according to agreed-upon technical specifications and quality standards.

The ideal candidate is an expert problem solver who can balance strategic thinking with hands-on delivery, while demonstrating strong leadership and technical acuity in a fast-paced, global environment. Communication and collaboration are key in day-to-day support activities for requirements refinement, development, testing, and implementation.

The Role 

About You:

• You are an experienced Product Owner/Business Analyst who can independently perform prioritization decisions, lead requirements discovery, solution definition, and refinement of complex features or epics. 

• You have strong stakeholder management skills and can confidently communicate and facilitate discussions across varying audiences—product managers, product owners, developers, testers, subject matter experts, and business partners. Furthermore, you demonstrate advanced-level critical thinking, visual modeling, analytical skills, and can guide teams through options, trade-offs, and solution decisions.

• You exhibit a strong sense of curiosity and problem solving, contributing to evaluating new tools, technologies, and approaches, and can lead proof-of-concepts that drive continuous improvement within the team, function, or program.

• You can mentor and coach less experienced Product Owners/Business Analysts, helping elevate team ways of working, analysis quality, and process consistency.

• You are comfortable working remotely across multiple time zones, ensuring clear, proactive communication and timely delivery of commitments.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical & Product Leadership

• Leads end-to-end discovery and requirements activities for complex features, epics, or cross-team initiatives.

• Facilitates Story Mapping, Design Thinking workshops, and other workflow visualization sessions to build shared understanding of problem statements and solution approaches.

• Evaluates requirement options and gude teams through decision-making trade-offs based on scope, time, feasibility, and risk.

• Defines high-quality user stories, acceptance criteria, and solution options, including the use of templates such as Gherkin Statements where appropriate.

• Leads backlog refinement sessions, and support sprint planning, release planning, and stakeholder demo sessions; able to back up the product owner as needed.

• Facilitates stakeholder demo sessions and conduct live demonstrations, when appropriate, to showcase team progress and elicit feedback from stakeholders.

• Triages bugs and defects encountered during development or production phases, and address any pending concerns.

• Ability to review test strategies and collaborate with testers to ensure coverage, clarity, and alignment with business needs.

• Analyzes test results, risks, and data to help teams plan effectively and communicate impact to stakeholders.

• Drives continuous improvements by identifying enhancements in product processes, team worklows, and SDLC practices.

People Skills & Soft Skills

• Facilitates complex team discussions and help the group arrive at well-informed, consensus-driven decisions.

• Mediates and recognizes differences in opinions, guiding teams toward shared understanding and mutually acceptable solutions. Be able to articulate opinions, risks, and concerns in a constructive and emotionally intelligent manner, especially in complex or ambiguous environments.

• Communicates clearly across multiple audiences—from technical discussions with dev team members to high-level summaries for leadership and stakeholders.

• Mentors and provide guidance to junior and mid-level Product Owner/Business Analysts; collaborates closely with them in sharing good practices on backlog prioritization, user story writing, requirements elicitation and documentation, and communication.

• Leads by example through accountability, clarity, and quality of work—helping reinforce strong delivery behaviors within the scrum team.

• Leads and facilitates product learning sessions to strengthen product awareness, domain understanding, and shared ownership across all roles in the program.

Strategic Leadership

• Influences product, program, or team backlogs by recommending prioritization decisions based on value, effort, feasibility, and risk. Acts as leader within the team, ensuring that requirements, solution decisions, and delivery activities support on-time and high-quality product outcomes.

• Demonstrates strong process disicipline while also knowing when and how to challenge existing norms constructively

• Evaluates emerging technologies, tools, industry practices, and provide recommendations for adoption when beneficial

• Leads or contributes to internal proof-of-concepts, share results with the team, and advocate for improvements to processes, tools, or delivery approaches.

• Takes on special initiatives or projects that contribute to the growth of the function or program

Responsibilities

Qualifications