Product Owner II - Money Movement API (Hybrid - Buffalo, NY)
Overview:
This is an exciting opportunity for a seasoned payments practitioner to lead the technology management and strategic evolution of the API services for money movement and payments within M&T Bank's ecosystem. As Product Owner II, you will be at the forefront of alignment on product vision, driving innovation, and delivering transformative money movement capabilities that support the future of digital/mobile transactions. This role requires a strong foundation in payment rails and transaction processing, coupled with expertise in one or more key disciplines, including Product Management, Agile delivery, or Payments Operations.
You will partner closely with business leaders, technology teams, and cross-functional stakeholders to shape and execute a product roadmap that delivers measurable value while aligning with enterprise strategy. You will own backlog prioritization, define and communicate product vision, and lead agile teams through the delivery of complex payment solutions. Success in this role requires a deep understanding of payments, examples include Wire, ACH, Instant Payments, Zelle, Bill Pay or emerging payment technologies, as well as the ability to influence without direct authority, navigate regulatory considerations, and make thoughtful decisions in a rapidly evolving landscape.
The ideal candidate combines payment industry expertise with a passion for innovation, customer-focused product development, and agile practices. This is a unique opportunity to help shape the future of payments, drive strategic business outcomes, and play a key role in delivering money movement capabilities.
Serves as owner of a large product or set of products by representing the voice of the customer and stakeholders to ensure that the product provides value to the customer, while aligning with the business strategy.
Primary Responsibilities:
- Own the end-to-end product vision, strategy, roadmap, adoption, and operational performance for money movement APIs, aligning with overall strategic intent and communicating priorities to the team and stakeholders. Prioritize the backlog(s) accordingly, with accountability for API lifecycle management, developer experience, service reliability, risk and control requirements, and measurable business and customer outcomes.
- Represent the voice of the customer within the team and convey story details to the team; make autonomous decisions, quickly and thoughtfully, to move delivery forward in alignment with overall product vision and strategy.
- Write user stories and groom the backlog in partnership with the team. Specify acceptance criteria for each user story in support of moving the team to Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD).
- Work directly with the delivery team to create appropriate information radiators and other communication tools for internal team and stakeholder use to show progress on a large product or multiple products.
- Participate in all team activities and ceremonies.
- Use a matrixed influencing approach to work with essential business partners throughout the organization, often at a more senior level and irrespective of hierarchy or divisions, advocating for the benefit of the customer.
- Understand and engage with your customers.
- Focus on outcomes over outputs, incorporating design thinking methods and analytics to inform product design. Due to the scope of these product(s), these efforts are often more complex.
- Collaborate across teams and with other Product Owners to align the customer journey and dependent backlogs.
- May act on behalf of the Senior Product Owner as required by absence.
- Understand and adhere to the Company’s risk and regulatory standards, policies and controls in accordance with the Company’s Risk Appetite. Identify risk-related issues needing escalation to management.
- Promote an environment that supports belonging and reflects the M&T Bank brand.
- Maintain M&T internal control standards, including timely implementation of internal and external audit points together with any issues raised by external regulators as applicable
- Complete other related duties as assigned
Managerial/Supervisory Responsibilities:
No direct management responsibility, but while an individual contributor, the jobholder must manage activities through influence, accountability and ownership, functioning in an agile environment.
Education and Experience Required:
Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 6 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 10 years’ higher education and/or work experience, including a minimum of 6 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience
Education and Experience Preferred:
- Prior experience prioritizing competing priorities and quickly changing landscape
- Prior experience actively seeking out multiple opinions, yet making independent decisions and influencing positive outcomes
- Understanding of Design Thinking principles
- Knowledge of product design and development best practices
- Knowledge of Agile and Lean principles and practices
- Experience working in partnership with user experience teams on product design
- Experience developing/managing digital capabilities
- Strong verbal and written communication skills