Product Owner

About Us 

Born from the vision to elevate Dubai's global prominence, Wasl was founded on May 25, 2008, with the mission to transform the city into an even more captivating destination for residents, businesses, and visitors alike. Created from the union of the Dubai Development Board and Real Estate Department, Wasl embarked on a journey of seamless integration. This strategic merger not only streamlined operations but also empowered our team with enhanced expertise, enabling us to adopt dynamic, market-driven investment strategies.

Today, Wasl stands tall as a cornerstone of Dubai's real estate landscape. As one of the city's largest and most diversified real estate management companies, we proudly oversee an expansive portfolio of landmark assets, entrusted to us by DREC and other esteemed partners. 

JOB DESCRIPTION

1. JOB DETAILS

Position Title: Product Owner
Reports to: Tribe Lead
Department: Business Excellence & Transformation

Direct Reports: 0

POSITION SUMMARY

The Product Owner acts as the transformation partner for assigned business areas, including Leasing, Freehold Sales, Asset Management Services and Solutions, Land, Hospitality, and other Group functions.

The role develops a strong understanding of business priorities, processes, customer needs, and operational challenges, translating them into prioritized requirements, product roadmaps, and technology-enabled solutions.

Working closely with the Tribe Lead, Business Excellence, Information Technology, business stakeholders, and implementation partners, the Product Owner manages the product lifecycle from requirements and solution design through delivery, testing, business readiness, adoption, and benefits realization. The role has no direct reports but influences cross-functional teams and stakeholders to deliver measurable business outcomes.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

Key Accountabilities

• Act as the primary transformation and product partner for assigned business portfolios, understanding their strategic objectives, processes, customer journeys, challenges, and future requirements.

• Build strong relationships with business leaders, process owners, IT teams, consultants, and enabling functions to maintain alignment throughout the product and transformation lifecycle.

• Lead requirements workshops, stakeholder interviews, process reviews, and customer journey mapping sessions to identify and validate business needs.

• Analyse As-Is processes and collaborate with Business Excellence to design standardized and improved To-Be processes.

• Gather, document, validate, and prioritize business requirements based on strategic alignment, customer value, operational impact, risk, feasibility, and dependencies.

• Translate business requirements into functional specifications, product features, user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, wireframes, and high-level technical requirements.

• Own and maintain the product backlog, roadmap, enhancement pipeline, and release priorities for assigned products and transformation initiatives.

• Act as the key liaison between business stakeholders, IT, implementation partners, vendors, and other functions during solution design and delivery.

• Review proposed solutions, system configurations, workflows, integrations, and prototypes to confirm alignment with approved business requirements and intended outcomes.

• Support delivery teams by clarifying requirements, resolving functional issues, coordinating decisions, and escalating risks, dependencies, scope concerns, and resource constraints.

• Participate in Agile ceremonies, backlog refinement, sprint planning, product demonstrations, release planning, and governance reviews.

• Co-lead User Acceptance Testing, including test planning, scenario development, business-user coordination, defect validation, acceptance decisions, and sign-off.

• Coordinate business readiness activities, including process documentation, training requirements, data readiness, stakeholder communication, and cutover preparation.

• Collaborate with Change Management teams to assess impacts, support adoption, and address readiness or resistance concerns.

• Define and monitor relevant KPIs, product adoption, customer experience, operational performance, and benefits realization following implementation.

• Identify continuous improvement opportunities and maintain a prioritized pipeline of future enhancements, automation initiatives, and product improvements.

• Prepare business cases, recommendations, governance reports, dashboards, and presentations for the Tribe Lead, steering committees, and senior leadership.

• Ensure requirements and solutions comply with relevant cybersecurity, data privacy, regulatory, internal control, and data governance requirements.

KEY TECHNICAL SKILLS AND COMPETENCY LEVELS

5. COMMUNICATIONS AND WORKING RELATIONSHIPS

Internal

Tribe Lead, Business Excellence & Transformation Leadership, Information Technology, Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, Data and Analytics, Finance, Procurement, Legal, Human Resources, Change Management, Risk and Compliance, Internal Audit, Leasing, Freehold Sales, Asset Management Services and Solutions, Land, Property Management, Hospitality, Leisure, Subsidiaries, Department Heads, Process Owners, Project Teams, and Business Users.

External

Technology Vendors, System Integrators, Implementation Partners, Consulting Firms, Software Providers, Service Providers, Government Entities, Regulatory Authorities, and Industry Associations.

CONTEXT, WORK ENVIRONMENT AND DECISION-MAKING AUTHORITY

The role operates within a diversified group comprising real estate, asset management, property management, hospitality, leisure, entertainment, and corporate functions. It works in a matrix environment and requires strong coordination across multiple business portfolios, systems, stakeholders, and transformation priorities.

Within approved governance and delegated authority, the Product Owner may:

• Prioritize and refine product backlog items.

• Recommend product, feature, release, and enhancement priorities.

• Validate functional designs and proposed solutions against approved requirements.

• Define business acceptance criteria and coordinate business testing and readiness.

• Accept completed features or recommend corrective action.

• Escalate unresolved risks, dependencies, scope conflicts, and major stakeholder decisions.

Significant investment decisions, major scope changes, enterprise architecture exceptions, contractual commitments, and regulatory matters are escalated to the Tribe Lead or relevant governance forum.

FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

The role does not normally hold independent budget approval authority but supports the financial management of assigned products and transformation initiatives.

Contributes to business cases, cost-benefit assessments, investment proposals, funding requirements, and financial impact analysis.

Monitors vendor effort, implementation costs, change requests, licensing implications, resource utilization, and emerging cost risks against approved plans.

Supports benefits tracking and post-implementation reviews to confirm that investments deliver expected operational, customer, financial, and strategic value.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Qualifications and Experience — Essential

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Real Estate, or a related discipline.

• 5–7 years of relevant experience in product ownership, digital transformation, business analysis, process improvement, project delivery, or enterprise solution implementation.

• Experience in requirements gathering, business process analysis, user-story development, backlog management, solution validation, and User Acceptance Testing.

• Experience coordinating business stakeholders, IT teams, consultants, vendors, and cross-functional project teams.

• Working knowledge of Agile, Waterfall, and hybrid delivery methodologies, product governance, release planning, risk management, and requirements traceability.

• Functional understanding of enterprise platforms such as SAP S/4HANA, Salesforce, ERP, CRM, CAFM, workflow automation, or comparable systems.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, facilitation, presentation, documentation, negotiation, and stakeholder-influencing skills.

• Ability to manage competing priorities, operate effectively in ambiguity, and influence stakeholders without direct authority.

Desirable

• Master’s degree in Business Administration, Digital Transformation, Information Technology, Engineering, Real Estate, or a related discipline.

• Professional certification in Product Ownership, Agile, Scrum, Business Analysis, Project Management, Lean Six Sigma, Design Thinking, or Change Management.

• Experience supporting real estate transformation, SAP S/4HANA, Salesforce, or large-scale enterprise platform implementation.

• Experience with Jira, Azure DevOps, Confluence, Visio, Lucidchart, Bizagi, Figma, Balsamiq, Adobe XD, Power BI, Tableau, Microsoft Power Platform, or similar tools.

• Knowledge of APIs, middleware, data governance, master data, reporting, and basic SQL concepts.

Note:
This job description provides a broad indication of the role and responsibilities of the position. The position holder may be required to perform additional tasks and responsibilities not listed here, in line with organizational needs and evolving business priorities.

Our Values 

At Wasl, we are more than just a real estate company. We are active contributors to Dubai's thriving economy, fostering enduring relationships with our valued stakeholders. Our customer-centric approach is rooted in trust, respect, and a relentless pursuit of innovation in every aspect of asset management.