Product Owner

This is a contract-to-perm opportunity.

In Short -- Project Description

We are partnering with a leading enterprise hospitality organization to modernize a mission-critical booking platform that directly impacts revenue generation and customer experience.

This initiative is focused on transforming a legacy lodging management and middleware ecosystem into a modern, scalable, and resilient architecture. Today, core booking capabilities are tightly coupled to legacy backend systems, creating risk when those systems experience downtime or performance limitations. A key objective of this effort is to enable the business to continue capturing bookings and revenue even when downstream systems are unavailable, significantly improving operational resilience and minimizing lost revenue.

In addition to improving system reliability, the program is designed to modernize the broader platform so it is more accessible to engineers and scalable for future growth. This includes rethinking the “middle layer” of the system to support more flexible interactions between front-end experiences and backend services.

A defining element of this engagement is the adoption of an AI-enabled, documentation-driven engineering model. Rather than relying solely on traditional development workflows, the team is leveraging structured documentation and AI agents to help generate, review, and refine code. This approach emphasizes high-quality specifications and continuous improvement of documentation as a foundation for scalable development, with human oversight ensuring quality and alignment with business objectives.

The work is delivered within a SAFe Agile framework, with quarterly Program Increment (PI) planning and close coordination across multiple product and engineering teams. This requires strong alignment between business goals and technical execution, as well as the ability to communicate priorities, roadmap, and expected outcomes to a wide range of stakeholders.

The team itself is a hybrid model, initially combining offshore and domestic resources, with a transition toward a core team that will take long-term ownership of the platform. The environment is highly collaborative and fast-moving, with a high degree of trust placed in the delivery team to define solutions and drive results.

This is a high-impact transformation effort where the outcomes are directly tied to business performance. Success requires not only delivering modern technology, but also ensuring that solutions are tightly aligned to business processes, customer journeys, and revenue-driving workflows.

The Product Owner for this initiative will play a critical role in bridging business outcomes and technical execution within a complex, enterprise-scale environment. This role goes beyond traditional, screen-focused product ownership and instead centers on defining and optimizing business processes, booking flows, and system interactions that drive measurable business value. The Product Owner will be responsible for articulating the product roadmap and priorities during SAFe Program Increment (PI) planning, collaborating with multiple cross-functional teams, and ensuring alignment across interconnected systems. Success in this role requires the ability to translate technical concepts into business impact, proactively identify downstream implications of changes, and operate independently in a highly collaborative environment while guiding stakeholders toward outcome-driven decisions

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with clients to make strategic decisions impacting their business solutions.
• Serve as the Product Owner for a large-scale modernization initiative focused on a mission-critical enterprise booking platform
• Define and prioritize product roadmap, features, and backlog aligned to business goals, customer experience, and revenue impact
• Lead business process and booking flow optimization across complex, interconnected systems
• Partner closely with engineering, architecture, and business stakeholders to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions
• Drive alignment between front-end experiences, middleware services, and backend platform capabilities
• Participate in and contribute to SAFe Agile ceremonies, including quarterly Program Increment (PI) planning
• Collaborate across multiple cross-functional product and engineering teams to coordinate dependencies and delivery priorities
• Communicate roadmap, priorities, risks, and expected outcomes clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Identify downstream impacts, operational risks, and system dependencies related to platform and process changes
• Support modernization of legacy systems into resilient, scalable, and maintainable architectures
• Ensure platform solutions are aligned with customer journeys, operational workflows, and business performance objectives
• Work within a highly collaborative, fast-paced environment while operating with a high degree of autonomy and ownership
• Contribute to an AI-enabled, documentation-driven delivery model by helping define clear specifications, requirements, and acceptance criteria
• Partner with distributed and hybrid delivery teams, including offshore and domestic resources

Skills & Experience

• Experience serving as a Product Owner, Product Manager, or Business Analyst within large-scale enterprise technology initiatives
• Strong experience working within SAFe Agile environments and participating in Program Increment (PI) planning
• Ability to bridge business objectives and technical execution in complex enterprise ecosystems
• Experience working with modern platform architectures, APIs, middleware, integrations, or distributed systems
• Strong understanding of system dependencies, operational resiliency, and scalable platform design concepts
• Ability to translate technical concepts into business value and stakeholder-friendly communication
• Experience managing cross-functional collaboration across engineering, architecture, product, and business teams
• Proven ability to prioritize competing initiatives and make outcome-driven decisions
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to evaluate downstream impacts and operational considerations
• Experience supporting digital transformation or legacy modernization initiatives preferred
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development workflows, documentation-driven engineering, or emerging AI tooling preferred
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills
• Comfortable operating independently in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
• Experience within hospitality, booking, travel, e-commerce, or other transaction-driven platforms preferred

Who We Are

Arke is a full-service experience design and technology consultancy dedicated to delivering connected, optimized digital solutions that spark conversations and fuel exponential growth. Our core values are the heart of Arke and influence everything we do. We cultivate a vibrant culture for extraordinary people and uphold high standards while creating value for our clients and stakeholders.

Why Arke?

At Arke, our greatest strength is our people. We believe in creating an environment where everyone can do meaningful work, grow their skills, and feel supported by a team that truly cares.

We offer a fantastic benefits package to our US-based employees, including health, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance, along with a 401(k) plan that includes up to a 4% company match. We also trust our employees to self-manage their personal time off and we invest in opportunities for ongoing learning, mentorship, and professional development.

For our Brazil team, we provide competitive compensation and access to growth and collaboration with our cross-cultural teams. Every Arke employee and contractor plays an important role in our success, and we value each person’s unique contributions to our culture.

We are proud to be a place where people enjoy working and feel encouraged to be their best. We hope you will explore what it is like to be part of Arke.