Product Owner

About the Role

Makai Labs is seeking a Product Owner with a strong sense of ownership, urgency, and communication. You’ll play a critical role translating business strategy into actionable development work - managing product backlogs, defining clear user stories, and ensuring that engineering and design teams have what they need to execute efficiently. The ideal candidate is detail-oriented, thrives in fast-paced environments, and excels at keeping cross-functional teams aligned through crisp documentation and proactive communication.

The Ideal Candidate Will Be Able to

• Collaborate with stakeholders and Product Managers to define and prioritize product features and user stories.
• Write detailed specs, acceptance criteria, and documentation that remove ambiguity and guide development.
• Analyze and document business requirements, ensuring that technical teams understand the why behind every feature.
• Communicate proactively - especially through email and asynchronous channels - keeping teams aligned and informed.
• Identify opportunities for process improvement and efficiency across teams and workflows.
• Balance urgency with precision, ensuring high-quality execution under tight timelines.

Responsibilities

• Own the product backlog and keep priorities clear, current, and actionable.

Facilitate Agile ceremonies: backlog grooming, sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives.

• Track progress against goals, communicating updates clearly to stakeholders.
• Oversee testing and validation to ensure features meet acceptance criteria.
• Collaborate with UX/UI designers to align user experience with business intent.
• Document, analyze, and iterate based on user feedback and performance metrics.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of direct Product Owner or similar experience.
• Strong understanding of Scrum and Agile product delivery.
• Proven success writing clear, detailed user stories and functional specs.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills - responsive and concise.
• Highly organized and proactive, with strong follow-through.
• Experience working cross-functionally in fast-moving or startup environments.
• Familiarity with Jira, Confluence, and Figma preferred.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with SaaS, AI, or ML
• Experience with product marketing and crafting go-to-market strategies

Core Values for Makai Employees

• Be a flexible, innovative and creative thinker
• Be congenial and a team player
• Be self-sufficient
• Be self-driven with an ownership mentality
• Have a strong work ethic

Benefits

• Fully remote role, Eastern time zone
• Opportunities to work in-person with local colleagues
• Generous PTO
• Flexible work schedule
• Free health insurance
• 401(k) matching
• Career growth & development opportunities