Product Owner

Project overview

Assignment Description

As a Technical Agile Product Owner (PO), you oversee accepted assignments that come in for HGI System Development and coordinate them with your fellow Product Owners. You align priorities across assignments with your fellow POs and with the Lead Product Owner. You yourself, like your fellow POs, are responsible for one or more needs statements, while acting as THE PO for one or more delivery teams.

As a Technical PO, you are capable of guiding and challenging a team of technicians (medior and senior system developers) within various domains, ranging from VMware to Java development of various artifacts, on content, dependencies, and feasibility. You collaborate with the delivery teams and the Agile Lean facilitators/Scrum Masters to incrementally increase the productivity and predictability of the teams. You act in a service-oriented manner towards the delivery teams so they can deliver their best work and improve it, and act as a sparring partner for needs requesters, program and project managers.

What sets you apart is your deep technical knowledge and your ability to empathize with the challenges of the teams. You have a keen insight into the technologies and systems the teams work with, such as networks, connections, and communication tools. This allows you to not only understand the processes but also to add value technically. You are well-versed in the underlying infrastructures and technical architectures, and you know exactly how they influence the performance and productivity of the teams.

This enables you to not only discuss technical solutions but also to identify and effectively address technical bottlenecks early on. Although technical and process results are important, you know that the success of your team ultimately depends on collective effort and collaboration. By combining your technical knowledge with strong communication skills, you ensure that the delivery teams not only improve technically but also enhance their collaboration and shared vision. The requested results are not solely material.

It is important to work on a shared understanding of each other and of the situation and context in which the relevant matters take place, so that this leads to common principles as a foundation for strengthening collaboration.

Background of the Assignment

You will be working within a Department responsible for a secure Generic IT Infrastructure. Within that, you will work in the HGI Section, which stands for 'Highly Classified Information Provision Infrastructure'. Within the Department, we are responsible for the network infrastructure that can be deployed worldwide for command and information exchange for various departments and organizations. Think of national and international Defense departments, NATO, and other collaborations. Our goal is to make information available reliably and quickly for operational C2 support.

The safety and flexibility of our military personnel depend on this. The High Classified Infrastructure

eCF Profile: Product Owner

Reference Area: B.06 System Construction

This assignment is based on the European e-Competence Framework (e-CF). This is a European standard for describing IT competencies and the associated level of responsibility. The eCF profile indicates which competencies and at what level (e-1 to e-5) are expected from the candidate. We expect candidates to clearly demonstrate in their CV that they possess these competencies. This can be done by describing for each relevant assignment or position:

CVs in which the required eCF competencies are not demonstrably present cannot be fully assessed for suitability.

Generic description of competence area and levels

Engineers software and/or hardware components to meet solution requirements, such as specifications, costs, quality, time, energy efficiency, information security, and data protection. Follows a systematic method to analyze and build required components and interfaces. Builds system structure models and performs system behavior simulations. Performs unit and system tests to ensure requirements are met.

Summary of task and mission

Represents the needs of the stakeholder community, the voice of the customer, to the agile team. Understands customer requirements and validates that the developed software solution meets the requirements. Connects Business and Agile teams.

• System Development (HGI-SO) Sub-Section faces a challenging assignment to implement significant improvements while the 'Defense world' is changing very rapidly. Furthermore, our technical specialists are in high demand and therefore a 'scarce commodity'. It is of utmost importance that HGI-SO further increases its predictability, as both operations and chain partners need us to realize strategic plans. For this, we are optimizing the department's structure and working methods. The working title for this is: 'Pleasant Work
• Ever Smarter
• (Doing) the Right Things'. We want to optimally organize and facilitate the teams that perform the delivery so that they can focus on delivering quality in their field. By making assignments clear and concrete early in the process, we facilitate the delivery teams to deliver optimally, in terms of volume, quality, and predictability.
• the role the candidate fulfilled
• the tasks and responsibilities involved
• the extent to which these align with the required eCF competencies and the level

Responsibilities

Requirements/Wishes

Candidate has at least 4 years of demonstrable work experience with the chosen eCF profile similar role.

Candidate preferably has demonstrable work experience within the Ministry of Defense.

Candidate preferably has more than demonstrable work experience with the requested role within the eCF profile and assignment description.

Additional Information

Hybrid work: The frequency is an estimate, provided the work allows. Agreements regarding working from home are always made in consultation with the needs requester. Frequency of days working from home: 2

On-call services: No

• Build, edit, and maintain the team backlog
• Define, prioritize, and validate software requirements through User Stories
• Establish acceptance criteria for stories and baseline stories
• Generate iteration goals and iteration content
• Collaborate with teams to define and implement improvement stories to enhance speed and quality
• Participate in team demonstrations and retrospectives

Project details

• Start: 2026-11-30T23:00:00
• Location: Amersfoort Utrecht, NL
• Languages: Dutch