Product Owner

As a Product Owner at Valant, you are the engine that keeps your engineering squad moving at full speed. This role was purpose-built to separate delivery execution from product strategy - giving engineers a dedicated product partner so they always have high-quality, ready-to-build work, and freeing Product Managers to focus on customer research, roadmap, and market intelligence.

You own three critical functions simultaneously: building and maintaining a deep, well-groomed backlog so engineering always has high-quality work ready; leading the agile ceremonies that keep your squad aligned and unblocked; and serving as the embedded execution partner who ensures that what gets built precisely matches what was intended. You receive high-level feature definitions and handoff packages from a Product Manager - and you are responsible for everything that happens from that point through story completion and acceptance testing.

You'll also work with cutting-edge AI tools as part of your daily workflow. Valant uses Replit prototypes so you can interact with a working version of a feature before writing a single story, and Codelligence - a custom tool that queries our codebase - so you can answer "how does it work today" questions in real time. Company-sponsored Claude licenses are standard across the product team.

Backlog Ownership

• Own and maintain a deep, continuously groomed product backlog for your assigned engineering squad - targeting a minimum of two full sprints of pointed, ready-to-execute stories at all times
• Decompose high-level feature definitions received from the Product Manager into well-formed user stories with complete acceptance criteria, explicit scope boundaries, and clear definition-of-ready compliance
• Manage story sequencing, dependency tracking, and priority ordering within your squad's backlog; surface conflicts or ambiguities to the Product Manager before they affect sprint planning
• Maintain requirement traceability from feature definition through individual stories, acceptance testing, and delivery confirmation
• Track and report backlog coverage metrics; proactively flag risks to backlog health before they affect sprint starts

Scrum Master & Agile Ceremonies

• Lead all agile ceremonies for your assigned squad: sprint planning, daily stand-up, backlog grooming, sprint review, and retrospective
• Facilitate ceremonies with structure and discipline: keeping discussions focused, outcomes documented, and follow-up actions clearly owned
• Actively identify and remove blockers that affect squad velocity; escalate impediments that require cross-team coordination to the appropriate owner
• Track squad velocity over time; identify patterns of disruption, rework, or scope creep and surface root causes with proposed solutions
• Foster a healthy, high-performing team environment within your squad - modeling clarity, accountability, and continuous improvement

Squad Execution Partnership

• Serve as the primary product point of contact for your squad's engineers on all story-level questions: clarifications, edge cases, acceptance criteria interpretation, and in-sprint priority decisions
• Conduct or coordinate user acceptance testing (UAT) for completed stories; verify that delivered functionality meets accepted criteria before sprint sign-off
• Own iterative path planning within the sprint - maintaining a clear view of what's in progress, what's at risk, and what adjustments are needed to meet sprint goals
• Document edge cases, integration considerations, and workflow exceptions that emerge during development; incorporate learnings into future story writing
• Use AI-assisted tools including Replit prototypes and Codelligence to understand existing functionality and feature intent; iterate on prototypes as features evolve during development
• Partner closely with your Product Manager to ensure that the upstream requirements pipeline is healthy - providing early warning when the handoff package for upcoming features is insufficient for story decomposition

Success in Year 1 Looks Like...

• Squad's backlog maintains 2 full sprints of pointed, ready-to-execute stories at all times - sprint-start scrambles are the exception, not the norm
• All agile ceremonies are running on schedule and documented and facilitation has fully transitioned to you
• Engineers are consistently unblocked on story-level questions within the sprint - PM escalation happens rarely and intentionally
• Acceptance testing is a consistent, documented practice: no story ships to sprint sign-off without verified criteria

• 2+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, or junior Product Manager in an agile software development environment
• Demonstrated ability to write precise, complete user stories and acceptance criteria for complex software features
• Experience facilitating agile ceremonies - including sprint planning, grooming, and retrospectives - with engineering teams
• Strong attention to detail; able to identify gaps, ambiguities, and unstated assumptions in feature specifications before they reach development
• Clear, structured written communication skills: able to translate product intent into engineering-ready language with no room for misinterpretation
• Organized, proactive, and comfortable managing concurrent priorities across multiple active stories within a sprint
• Genuine ownership mindset: you take personal accountability for your squad's backlog health and delivery outcomes
• Comfortable using AI tools (LLMs, prototyping tools, code-querying tools) as part of day-to-day product work

Nice to Have

• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or equivalent agile certification
• Experience in healthcare IT, EHR platforms, behavioral health, or revenue cycle management
• Familiarity with Azure DevOps, Jira, or similar agile project management and backlog tools
• Background in software QA or acceptance testing

Health insurance, 401(k) matching, Paid time off, Vision insurance, Health savings account, Dental insurance, Paid sick time, * Competitive compensation package, including 100% employer-paid medical, dental, vision premiums and HSA contributions

• Generous paid time off and paid sick time policy
• Bonus plans
• 401k with partial match!
• Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI features that shape the future of behavioral healthcare
• Ability to work remotely with a strong internet connection
• Salary Range for this position is $75,000-$100,000

Now more than ever, our world needs mental health professionals. Day in and day out, they're doing their best to provide exceptional care to an increasing number of patients. But, they're working with generic or simplistic tools that limit their potential and growth. We want to change all that - by giving behavioral health organizations everything they need to thrive. Valant is an established market-leading, software-as-a-service organization serving the unique needs of the behavioral healthcare industry. Our purpose is to make our world a mentally healthier place and we're seeking enthusiastic, passionate individuals to join us as we transform the industry! If that sounds like you, we'd like to hear from you.