Product Owner

Job Description

When it comes to putting people first, we're number 1.

The number 1 Top Employer in South Africa.
Certified by the Top Employer Institute 2025.

Role Purpose/Business Unit:

• The Product Owner represents the business stakeholders and is the voice of the customer guiding individual DevOps teams, responsible for ensuring that the delivery team delivers value to the business according to the outcome vision
• Key to the success of this role is the ability to form relationships at all levels in order to partner and collaborate to collectively deliver on the vision.
• This role is responsible for crafting customer-centric digital experiences by:
  
  • Having a thorough understanding of the current journeys
  • Identifying opportunities for optimisation, simplification and digitisation of the current journeys that unlocks value to the business
  • Defining and presenting the vision, motivating for sign off of the identified opportunities, and then for the definition of user stories aligned with the feature roadmap.
• This role will work closely with the Release Train Engineer/Agile Programme Manager and Scrum Master in coordinating day to day activities such as sprint planning, retrospectives and other agile functions to ensure collaboration and effective delivery of user stories against commercial milestone objectives.
• Product owner works to Agile principles, and will be responsible for the prioritization and delivery of the backlog of change initiatives to maximize business benefit.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Unlocking Business Value: Own, drive, and focus the team on delivery of business value and content.
• Backlog Development: Develop and define user stories / items and acceptance criteria from the feature and capability roadmap.
• Backlog Management: Create, maintain, and prioritise the feature / deliverable backlog to ensure the most valuable work is delivered first.
• Iteration Review: Participate in sprint reviews, retrospectives, and other Agile ceremonies to ensure continuous improvement and alignment.
• Analyse and report delivery risks and opportunities, and engage stakeholders for communications and decision-making.
• Define success metrics and reporting measures for the identified opportunities.
• Provide timely and insightful reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs), enabling the business to assess delivery progress, identify risks, and drive continuous improvement.

The ideal candidate for this role will have:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, or other related field
• A total of eight or more years experience of which at least three or more years is in the successful delivery in Product Ownership (or equivalent role)
• Experience in agile methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), Test Driven Design and Behavioural Driven Design
• Experience in successful delivery against financial / resource constraints
• Experience in the use of analytics and AB / multivariate testing
• Experience with requirements definition and use case modelling
• Professional experience and knowledge of the Telecommunications industry strongly preferred

Core competencies, knowledge and experience:

• Excellent problem-solving skills, with the ability to minimize overhead tasks for the team and manage interdependences with other teams
• Excellent relationship building and influencing skills, with the ability to foster an inclusive team culture
• Excellent business acumen and understanding of the role of the capability in contributing to business value
• In-depth understanding of both the current Telecommunications and digital services market and emerging business and technology trends
• A strong customer-centric focus, with an entrepreneurial and ROL mindset. Ability to function with a high degree of autonomy
• Strong financial management skills and acumen
• Strong time-management skills, with the ability to juggle multiple balls, and comfortable working under pressure
• Excellent verbal and written communications and collaboration skills, with the ability to work closely with the delivery team to deliver user stories
• Flexible with planning and work estimation, managing and empowering the team (without needing to micromanage), able to continuously balance between the customer and commercial needs
• Digital/software product ownership in large scale environments
• User story definition and refinement
• Expertise in Agile software development environment and methods
• Market research, design thinking, and lean start-up methods; business modelling
• Customer experience design of digital products and services
• Analytics / AB / multivariate testing and related tools
• Data-driven decision making

We make an impact by offering:

• Enticing incentive programs and competitive benefit packages
• Retirement funds, risk benefits, and medical aid benefits
• Cell phone and data benefits, advantages fibre connection discounts, and exclusive staff discounts offered in collaboration with partner companies

Closing date for Applications: 29 January 2026.

The base location for this role is Vodacom Midrand Campus.

The company's approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.
Vodacom is committed to an organisational culture that recognises, appreciates, and values diversity & inclusion.