Title:  Product Owner

JOB SUMMARY

This role sits directly under the Sr. Director, Product Management in a small, high-visibility product organization. The Product Owner will own the backlog for a defined product area, with real latitude over day-to-day delivery decisions, direct access to product leadership, and a clear line of sight from the work to how operators run their business. For someone who wants to build durable expertise in a complex regulated domain and see their decisions reach production quickly, this is a more substantive seat than an equivalent role inside a large product org.

The Product Owner is responsible for translating Exacta’s product strategy and roadmap into clear, actionable work for software development teams. Serving as a key connection point between Product leadership, Engineering, Quality Assurance, Operations, and other business stakeholders, this role owns and prioritizes the product backlog and ensures development teams have the requirements, context, and clarity necessary to deliver high-quality solutions.

The Product Owner works closely with technical teams throughout the software development lifecycle to define requirements, develop user stories and acceptance criteria, clarify business needs, prioritize work, and validate that completed functionality achieves its intended outcome. This position requires a strong understanding of Exacta’s Historical Horse Racing (HHR) products, customers, operational environments, and business processes.

This is a hands-on, delivery-focused position. The Product Owner operates within the product strategy and roadmap established by Product leadership and is expected to exercise strong independent judgement on day-to-day prioritization, scope, and sequencing. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Product Backlog Ownership & Prioritization

• Own, maintain, and refine the product backlog.

• Translate product strategy, roadmap priorities, business needs, and customer requirements into actionable development work.

• Prioritize work based on business value, customer impact, dependencies, regulatory requirements, and defect severity.

• Ensure backlog items are defined, sequenced, and development-ready.

• Exercise independent judgment on daily priorities; escalate decisions materially affecting scope, roadmap, or strategy.

• Ensure development teams understand priorities and business rationale.

Requirements & User Story Development

• Translate business, customer, operational, and technical needs into user stories, use cases, business rules, and acceptance criteria.

• Clearly define problems, desired functionality, expected behavior, and intended outcomes.

• Identify gaps, dependencies, edge cases, and conflicts before development.

• Break larger initiatives into appropriately sized, actionable work and maintain accurate documentation.

Agile Delivery, Quality & Release

• Serve as the primary Product representative for assigned development teams and participate in Agile ceremonies.

• Partner with Engineering, developers, Scrum Masters, and QA throughout development to ensure alignment on requirements and intended outcomes.

• Clarify requirements, resolve ambiguities, and address dependencies, risks, constraints, and competing priorities.

• Partner with QA to ensure acceptance criteria are testable; review completed functionality and participate in demonstrations, validation, and user acceptance activities.

• Identify gaps between delivered functionality and requirements and coordinate resolution with Engineering and QA.

• Prioritize defects based on customer impact, business severity, regulatory implications, and competing priorities.

• Confirm requirements, documentation, acceptance criteria, and validation are complete before release.

• Support release planning, communications, and knowledge transfer.

• Monitor post-release feedback for defects, follow-up requirements, and enhancements; apply lessons learned to future backlog refinement.

Stakeholder & Business Requirements

• Distinguish defects, operational issues, operator-specific requests, enhancements, and broader product requirements and route each appropriately.

• Keep Product Marketing current on scope, timing, and functionality changes so communications and external commitments reflect what is shipping.

• Build strong relationships with Customer Operations, Field Operations, Sales, Compliance, and other stakeholders.

• Evaluate stakeholder requests and translate business needs into structured product requirements.

• Communicate status, scope, dependencies, and delivery expectations; manage expectations when requests conflict with roadmap priorities or capacity.

Product & Industry Knowledge

• Maintain strong knowledge of Exacta’s products, platforms, architecture, and HHR environments, including Exacta Connect, NXT, integrations, operator environments, and relevant product capabilities.

• Understand applicable regulatory requirements and incorporate them into development work.

• Understand customer workflows and operational challenges affecting product requirements.

• Continuously strengthen technical and product knowledge to improve communication between business and technical stakeholders.

REQUIRED SKILLS AND ABILITIES

• Strong ability to translate business needs and product direction into clear, actionable requirements for technical teams.
• Strong prioritization skills with the ability to balance business value, customer impact, defects, technical dependencies, and delivery constraints.
• Ability to understand complex software systems and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to surface gaps, dependencies, edge cases, and unintended consequences before they reach development.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the credibility to hold a position when a stakeholder request conflicts with committed priorities.
• Highly organized with strong attention to detail, documentation, and follow-through.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment with changing priorities and competing stakeholder needs.
• Demonstrated ownership from initial requirement definition through delivery and validation.
• Working knowledge of Jira, Confluence, or comparable Agile/product development tools preferred. 

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related discipline preferred; equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience considered.
• 3+ years of experience in Product Ownership, Product Management, Business Analysis, software development, software quality assurance, or a related technology role preferred.
• Demonstrated experience writing user stories, acceptance criteria, business rules, or comparable functional requirements.
• Experience working directly with software development and Quality Assurance teams throughout the development lifecycle.
• Hands-on experience working in an Agile or Scrum environment.
• Experience owning or prioritizing a software development backlog.
• Experience with B2B technology platforms, complex software systems, gaming technology, transaction-based systems, or regulated industries preferred.
• Gaming, HHR, pari-mutuel, or wagering industry experience is a plus but not required.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS & WORKING CONDITIONS

This position may require occasional travel to customer locations, Exacta operating markets, industry events, or other Churchill Downs Incorporated locations to support requirements gathering, implementation, and business objectives.

The following physical and mental demands are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 
• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit, sometimes for prolonged periods while working at a desk, on the phone, and/or on the computer; type on a computer keyboard; use hands to finger, handle or feel; talk or hear; reach with hands or arms; walk or stand; and perform some repetitive motion activities. 
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, color vision, color differentiation, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus. 
• This position requires the ability to work effectively as part of a team; and concentrate on a variety of details when faced with interruptions and changing work priorities. 
• The mental demands are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions, as described above, including but not limited to: demonstrated ability to anticipate and solve practical problems or resolve issues; reason, calculate figures and amounts; collect, interpret, and/or analyze complex data and information, and draw valid conclusions; interpret procedures and policies; and meet schedules in a dynamic and sometimes demanding work environment. 
• The noise level in this work environment is usually moderate. The work environment characteristics are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job in a typical office environment. 
• The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or disability.