Product Owner

Product Owner

Description

At the World Bank Group (WBG), you’ll join a diverse, global community working across cultures, disciplines, and borders to address the world’s most pressing development challenges. With 1.2 billion young people reaching working age in the decade ahead, the challenge of job creation has never been greater. Through partnerships across 145 countries and more than 182 offices worldwide, we work with governments, private sector, development partners and other stakeholders to invest in people, strengthen markets, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that generate more and better jobs and improve lives. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org 

VPU Context:  

The Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) Vice Presidential Unit (VPU) enables the World Bank Group to achieve its mission of ending extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet by delivering transformative information and technologies to its staff working in over 150+ locations. For more information on ITS, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=VTFGffa1Y7w 
 
Unit Context:   

The WBG Corporate Solutions Department (ITSCO) is focused on the digital transformation of essential corporate services to ensure WBG operations are seamless, resilient, and future ready. Uniting digitalization roadmaps, experience design, process optimization, application delivery, systems management, and technology modernization across 70+ products, the department links business ambition with operational excellence - from intuitive employee experiences and precision payroll to data-driven decision making, intelligent automation, and AI enablement.
 
The Corporate Digital Acceleration unit accelerates digital transformation for corporate business functions through design thinking, digital innovation, rapid prototyping, reimagining processes, and AI enablement, e.g. AI-first work digitalization strategies.

Role Purpose: 

The Product Owner will help shape and translate the vision for reimagined corporate solutions and processes in an AI-enabled and agentic future. Working across WBG corporate functions and ITS technology teams, the role will develop a prioritized roadmap for integrated digital services that simplify work, improve access to support and insights, and intelligently automate end-to-end processes. The focus will be on measurable gains in employee experience, operational effectiveness, and business value through secure, governed, and scalable solutions.

The Product Owner will turn this vision into a clear product strategy and prioritized roadmap, leading the full lifecycle from discovery and validation through delivery, adoption, and continuous improvement. The role will ensure that solutions respond to user needs, advance the World Bank Group’s strategic priorities, and deliver measurable outcomes.

Working closely with business stakeholders, service owners, designers, data specialists, and technology teams, the Product Owner will identify opportunities to redesign how work gets done, prioritize investments and capabilities, and translate complex needs into intuitive, AI-first solutions. They will define success measures and use research, feedback, experimentation, and performance data to guide decisions and improve outcomes.
A central focus will be making AI and agentic capabilities practical, trusted, and responsible, with safeguards that preserve human judgment, accountability, and control. This is an opportunity to shape the next generation of corporate services and processes across the World Bank Group.

Duties and accountabilities: 

• Product Vision and Strategy: Define, champion, and continuously evolve the vision, strategy, roadmap, and value proposition for reimagined corporate solutions and end-to-end processes, using data, AI, automation, and agentic capabilities to improve how work gets done.
• Client Discovery and Process Opportunities: Lead continuous discovery with staff, managers, business units, and corporate functions, using research, analytics, observation, and feedback to identify pain points, unmet needs, and opportunities to redesign services and processes.
• Roadmap and Product Priorities: Own the product priorities, roadmap, and backlog, balancing near-term delivery with longer-term innovation and transformation. Translate strategy into requirements, prototypes, minimum viable products, and releases, and make evidence-based decisions on whether to build, buy, integrate, reuse, partner, or stop.
• Experimentation and Agile Delivery: Lead iterative delivery from discovery through launch, using prototypes, pilots, minimum viable products, and user testing to validate assumptions, make timely decisions, and deliver measurable outcomes.
• Cross-Functional Product Leadership: Partner across business and ITS teams, connecting clients, service owners, design, data, AI, architecture, and engineering expertise. Translate complex needs into viable requirements and ensure solutions are intuitive, secure, interoperable, reusable, and scalable.
• Adoption and Stakeholder Alignment: Build alignment among sponsors, stakeholders, and users through clear product narratives, investment cases, communications, and readiness plans that support adoption and embed new solutions and processes into everyday ways of working.
• Product Value, Performance, and Evolution: Define success measures; monitor adoption, usage, satisfaction, service performance, operational impact, and realized value; and use evidence to manage risks, report progress, and continuously improve solutions and processes.

Selection Criteria

•   Master’s degree with at least five years of relevant experience, or bachelor’s degree with at least seven years of relevant experience, in information technology, business, product management, design, engineering, innovation, or a related field.

Candidates will complete a practical assessment of the capabilities required for the role.

• Strategic Product and Business Leadership: Strong business judgment and the ability to turn strategic priorities, client needs, and complex problems into a clear product vision, roadmap, investment choices, and measurable outcomes.
• Client Insight and Process Reimagination: Ability to uncover user needs, understand end-to-end processes, challenge assumptions, and identify practical opportunities to simplify services and improve outcomes.
• Digital, AI, and Modern Ways of Working: Demonstrated confidence using digital, AI-enabled, agentic, automation, and data capabilities to solve business problems. Comfortable learning quickly, experimenting, and working iteratively.
• Execution, Judgment, and Sense of Urgency: Proven ability to set priorities, make sound and timely decisions, remove obstacles, and deliver high-quality results in a complex environment without losing sight of longer-term value.
• Communication and Influence: Exceptional written, verbal, and visual communication skills, with the ability to explain complex ideas simply, craft compelling product and investment narratives, facilitate decisions, and build trust across business and technical audiences.
• Change Leadership and Collaboration: Demonstrated drive to act as a change agent, challenge ineffective practices constructively, align diverse stakeholders, and help teams adopt new solutions and ways of working with clarity and confidence.
• Intellectual Agility and Accountability: A sharp, curious, and practical thinker who learns quickly, asks the right questions, uses evidence well, takes ownership, and follows through on commitments to deliver meaningful business value.

Certifications:

• Required: Agile or scaled-Agile certification (SAFe Agilist, SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager, or SAFe® DevOps Practitioner)
• Recommended: IDEO U Foundational Design Thinking Certificate/Business Innovation Certificate; Digital Transformation certification.

As the World Bank Group continues to evolve, we value candidates who:

• Demonstrate the ability to collaborate effectively across teams, disciplines, cultures, and institutional boundaries.
• Responsibly leverage digital and AI-enabled tools to enhance productivity, learning, and decision-making.
• Bring experience working in fragile, conflict-affected, and violent (FCV) contexts and are encouraged to highlight relevant experience in their application materials, where applicable.

WBG Culture Attributes:

1. Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
3. Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.

World Bank Group Core Competencies 

The World Bank Group offers comprehensive benefits, including a retirement plan; medical, life and disability insurance; and paid leave, including parental leave, as well as reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity and inclusive employer with a dedicated and committed workforce, and do not discriminate based on gender, gender identity, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.

Learn more about working at the World Bank and IFC including our values and inspiring stories.