Kestra Financial

SUMMARY:

Kestra is seeking a detail-oriented and collaborative Data Product Owner for the L2/L3 production support team over our enterprise data platform. Reporting to the Manager of Data Product Management, this role focuses on ensuring the stability, scalability, and operational effectiveness of our data platform by managing support-focused backlog items, collaborating with engineers, and coordinating issue resolution for platform users across the organization.

The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of data platform operations, production support workflows, and cross-functional collaboration to minimize disruptions and ensure timely resolution of issues. This Product Owner will bridge the gap between business stakeholders and technical support teams to drive value through reliable and responsive data services.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Serve as the Product Owner for the L2/L3 Data Platform Support team, focusing on maintaining and enhancing the operational performance and reliability of Kestra’s enterprise data platform.
• Partner with Data Platform Engineering to triage incidents, prioritize and manage defect backlogs, and track resolution of recurring platform issues.
• Work closely with Data Engineers, Product, QA, and IT support teams to ensure timely and coordinated responses to production incidents, performance bottlenecks, and system failures.
• Translate support tickets, incident patterns, and user pain points into actionable user stories with clear acceptance criteria to drive platform improvements.
• Coordinate root cause analysis efforts and ensure post-incident learnings are translated into preventive backlog items.
• Actively monitor and refine the support backlog, balancing urgent fixes, technical debt, and platform enhancement requests to define and meet service level expectations.
• Participate in platform health reviews and help define metrics for support performance, incident trends, and user experience improvements.
• Communicate clearly with business users regarding support timelines, resolution progress, and impacts to downstream systems or processes.
• Ensure alignment with platform governance standards, security protocols, and data quality policies when planning and implementing fixes or enhancements.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Data Governance, and Engineering teams to integrate support insights into long-term platform strategy and roadmap planning.

Contribute to release readiness by validating fixes, coordinating QA, and participating in deployment communications and change management efforts.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND/OR ABILITIES:

• Familiarity with incident and problem management workflows, root cause analysis techniques, and production support best practices.
• Strong ability to document and translate operational issues into backlog items in technical and business contexts.
• Experience working in Agile teams and managing backlogs focusing on support, maintenance, and platform reliability.
• Solid understanding of data platform components, including ingestion pipelines, data lakes, data warehouses, orchestration tools, and monitoring systems.
• Ability to query and analyze data using SQL to support issue investigation, validation, and stakeholder reporting.
• Effective cross-functionally with engineering, IT support, QA, and business users to ensure consistent and coordinated delivery.
• Strong organizational and prioritization skills, especially in high-pressure or time-sensitive support scenarios.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain technical issues and operational impacts to non-technical audiences.
• Customer-focused mindset with empathy for end users and a drive to reduce data platform access and usage friction.

EDUCATION AND/OR EXPERIENCE:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Business, or a related field; equivalent experience will be considered.
• 3+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, or Support Lead in a data or technology environment.
• Experience working with cloud-based data platforms, especially within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem (e.g., Azure Data Factory, Synapse, Data Lake) and tools like Databricks.
• Hands-on experience with incident management platforms, Agile tools (e.g., JIRA, Confluence), and monitoring/logging tools preferred.
• Familiarity with data warehousing concepts, data pipelines, and enterprise data architecture.

CERTIFICATES, LICENSES, REGISTRATION:

• None required.