Senior Product Owner

Environmental Science Associates (ESA) is looking for an experienced Senior Product Owner for our Corporate Technology Services AI Development Team. The successful candidate will have a minimum of 8 years of experience to join our dynamic software development team based in Portland, Oregon. This is a hybrid position that supports conducting most work from a flexible location of your choosing. ESA's agile teams have the option to meet in person a few times a month for sprint planning and retrospectives and may choose to work together in ESA's office a few days a week. We are therefore seeking candidates ideally located in the vicinity of Portland who will be available to occasionally travel to the Portland office.

Who You Are

• You are an experienced Product Owner with a minimum of 8 years of experience in leading the design, development, deployment, and operations of multi-faceted, software, data, AI and machine learning solutions and/or products, preferably for federal, state, and regional natural resources agencies. You have served as a technical specialist; selecting, applying and adapting standard techniques, methods, technology, and procedures to translate business requirements to a proposed technical solution.
• You are an effective team member and communicator who proactively identifies and contributes constructively to address broad project or team issues, providing mentoring and coaching to more junior staff to foster teamwork. You have experience as a Scrum Master, leading team rituals, managing agile development sprints, and ensuring team health is monitored and maintained.
• You are curious, quick study, personable, possess excellent oral and presentation skills and have facilitated client and project stakeholder meetings to understand their workflows and develop innovative tools and systems, and then led your interdisciplinary project team to deliver project assignments on time and within budget.
• The successful candidate will bring a strong record of delivering digital products in complex, enterprise environments, with an emphasis on applied AI rather than theoretical data science. You should demonstrate fluency in AI-enabled capabilities such as natural language processing, decision support, and automation, along with a clear understanding of model limitations, data quality considerations, and the importance of human-in-the-loop design. While not expected to be an architect or engineer, the role requires enough technical depth to engage meaningfully in discussions around system architecture, APIs, data pipelines (especially in Databricks), cloud platforms, and security constraints, and to translate those considerations into realistic roadmaps and prioritization decisions.
• You hold a bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, or a related scientific field and can pass a federal and/or state background check for project-based assignments.
• Experience partnering closely with UX to design trustworthy, transparent AI experiences is essential, as is the ability to communicate technical tradeoffs and AI risks to non-technical stakeholders.
• You have experience as a project manager, managing scope, schedule, and budget for moderate to high complexity projects.
• Ideally, you also have experience with environmental permitting processes, environmental & construction compliance, and/or mobile field data collection for compliance. If you don't have this experience, you are ready to quickly learn all that you can so that you can support clients with user-friendly, robust software solutions to make the compliance process efficient and joyful.

What You Will Do for ESA

• As a Product Owner, you will lead cross-functional teams of developers, analysts, and UX designers through outcome-driven, agile product delivery.
• The Product Owner must be adept at turning ambiguous business problems into testable hypotheses, clearly articulated user outcomes, and actionable backlogs, while continuously learning from real-world usage. Successful candidates will have demonstrated sound judgment in balancing innovation with scalability, security, and responsible use of AI in products that serve both employees and customers.
• You will serve as a technically fluent product leader who can translate complex data, workflows, and system interactions into well-defined product capabilities and delivery plans. In this role, you will collaborate with engineering, analytics, and UX partners to shape and refine end-to-end solutions, establish effective testing and release practices, and ensure technical decisions align with enterprise standards and long-term scalability.
• Your approach is grounded in systems thinking, with the ability to reason about processes, data flows, and model-driven designs, and you bring a working familiarity with data analysis and visualization to inform decisions and evaluate product outcomes.
• You will demonstrate a clear understanding of project management principles and practices related to estimation and backlog refinement for selected tasks and/or projects of moderate to high complexity in accordance with applicable guidelines and requirements, while delivering assignments within budget and on schedule.
• You will provide mentorship and support for junior staff, including reviewing their work for accuracy and clarity, and providing constructive feedback and career development guidance while working on projects together.
• You will thrive in a fast-paced, challenging environment and be able to manage multiple responsibilities and deadlines while working on a team or independently.

What's Special About Our Technology Team

What's special about ESA's Technology Team is the opportunity to work at the leading edge of environmental impact, where advanced technology is transforming from an experiment or a side function to a core driver of differentiation, speed, and real-world outcomes. Our team is building and deploying AI-enabled, data-driven, and cloud-native solutions that help our clients and communities better understand, protect, and restore the natural systems they depend on-while also improving efficiency, resilience, and economic viability.

From applying AI and natural language interfaces to environmental data, to modernizing enterprise workflows, building shared data platforms, and accelerating innovation across the firm, Technology Services sits at the intersection of exploration and execution. This is a place for technologists who want their work to matter: delivering cutting-edge solutions that improve environmental outcomes, strengthen communities, and enable sustainable growth for both our clients and our employee-owned firm.