Lead Data Product Owner

Lead Data Product Owner
Duration: 12 months

Role Overview
Oue client seeks a Senior Data Product Leader to establish and mature an enterprise Data Product capability. The role owns product vision, roadmap, stakeholder alignment, adoption, governance and value realisation for strategic reusable data products consumed across Vodacom markets. This is not a traditional BI, reporting or project delivery role.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and lead a Data Product Ownership capability.
• Own product vision, roadmap, prioritisation and lifecycle management.
• Identify, define and launch reusable enterprise Data Products.
• Drive business adoption and change management.
• Facilitate prioritisation across competing executive stakeholders.
• Translate business needs into product specifications for engineering teams using Spec-Driven Data Engineering principles.
• Define KPIs, adoption metrics and value-realisation measures.
• Partner with Data Engineering, Architecture, Governance and Analytics teams.
• Own consumer trust, governance, quality and product performance.
• Provide executive-level communication on outcomes, risks and recommendations.

Mandatory Experience

• 10+ years in Data, Product, Analytics or Data Management environments.
• 5+ years in Data Product Ownership or Product Management roles.
• Experience building or transforming data assets into Data Products.
• Proven executive stakeholder management and influence.
• Experience driving product adoption, organisational change and business value realisation.
• Telco experience advantageous.

Technical Environment
GCP preferred; AWS exposure advantageous. Strong understanding of Data Products, Data Governance, Data Quality, Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, Customer 360 concepts, Agile delivery and SQL.

Leadership Competencies

• Executive communication
• Stakeholder influence without authority
• Conflict resolution and prioritisation
• Strategic thinking
• Commercial acumen
• Collaboration across business and technical domains
• Ability to bring structure to ambiguity

First 6 Months Success Measures

• Understand strategy and stakeholders
• Assess current data assets
• Identify priority data products
• Define governance model
• Establish adoption measures
• Deliver and socialise Data Product roadmap

Ideal Candidate Profile
A strategic Data Product leader capable of bridging business and engineering teams, influencing senior stakeholders and delivering measurable business value through reusable, governed data products

Desired Skills:

• Data products
• Product ownership
• Stakeholder management and influence