Technical Product Owner - Leuven, Belgium - Long Term Contract

Technical Product Owner

Initial 12 month freelance contract + possible extensions

Leuven, Belgium (3 days onsite per week)

4th May start

40 hours/week

Our client is looking for a Technical Product Owner to lead the development and continuous improvement of their digital customer portal. This role is responsible for owning the product vision, ensuring delivery of high-quality solutions, and maintaining a clear roadmap (9 months to a year out) that supports business priorities.

The product owner will maintain a clear short term product roadmap (0-12 months), ensuring the delivery of high-quality solutions together with the development team. Aligning delivery with business priorities and the product vision. Working closely with front & back-end developers, stakeholders, and leadership to translate business needs into actionable user stories while ensuring successful delivery through Agile practices.

The assignment

Product Ownership

• Own the digital portal product, including its vision, build and ongoing evolution.
• Define and maintain a product roadmap at least 9 months ahead, aligning with organizational priorities and user needs.
• Ensure the product delivers measurable value and continuously improves based on feedback and data.

Backlog & Delivery Management

• Own and manage the product backlog, ensuring items are clearly defined, prioritized, and ready for development.
• Break down large initiatives and epics into manageable user stories and tasks.
• Ensure features and stories progress through development and reach completion with clear acceptance criteria.

Development Team Collaboration

• Work closely with developers, portfolio manager, functional analysts and technical architect to ensure a shared understanding of requirements.
• Provide day-to-day guidance to the development team and help unblock issues when they arise.
• Ensure the team is focused on the highest-priority work that delivers value.

Quality & Delivery Assurance

• Maintain accountability for the quality of delivered features and releases.
• Validate that completed work meets defined requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Ensure solutions are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with technical standards.

Agile Product Management

• Apply Agile principles and practices in planning, backlog management, and iteration cycles together with the scrum master.
• Participate in sprint planning, backlog refinement, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Foster continuous improvement in team processes and delivery.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborate with business stakeholders to understand needs, gather requirements, and communicate progress.
• Translate business objectives into clear product priorities.
• Provide transparency into roadmap progress, delivery timelines, and product outcomes

Required knowledge and skills

• Experience as a Product Owner, Technical Product Owner, or similar role in digital product development.
• Strong experience managing product backlogs, roadmaps, and Agile delivery processes.
• Ability to break down complex initiatives into structured epics, stories, and deliverables.
• Experience working as part of software development teams.
• Solid understanding of Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, or similar). Strong organizational and prioritization skills.
• Communication skills: must be able to articulate product vision, goals, requirements, KPI’s to stakeholders and developments teams
• Analytical: ability to assess market trends, user feedback, product performance- to help prioritizing backlog, making data driven decisions and solving complex problems
• Leadership & Collaboration: lead a team towards achieving the product vision, foster collaboration
• Customer Focus: Understand customer (both internal & external) needs and preferences and translate these insights into actionable features
• Strategic thinking: ability to align product development with longer term business objectives, includes understanding market dynamics, competitive landscape and complex business needs

Technical Understanding

• Working knowledge of software development concepts and system architecture.
• Ability to engage in technical discussions with developers and understand trade-offs.
• Comfortable working with technical documentation, APIs, integrations, and platform capabilities.

Key Attributes

• Strong product ownership mindset and accountability for outcomes.
• Clear communicator who can bridge business and technical teams.
• Structured thinker who can translate complex ideas into actionable work.
• Proactive problem solver with a focus on delivery and quality