Product Owner (80-100%, Zurich Hybrid)

VSHN, pronounced like “vision,” specializes in supporting software development teams to make their work testable, deployable, scalable, and operable in any cloud environment, with a focus on efficiency and automation. We achieve this by providing self-service platform products like Managed OpenShift, APPUiO and Application Catalog to developers that ease the development and deployment cycle, sharing application operations responsibility through close collaboration with developers.

Your New Role: Product Owner Managed OpenShift & APPUiO Cloud

As the Product Owner, you will bridge the gap between our internal customer representatives (Account Managers) and other stakeholders to strategize, plan your team's sprint work, and balance day-to-day operations, supported by Pre-Sales Solution Architects and a Scrum Master for the meta-level. You will steer the further development of a mature VSHN product offering and existing customer setups as well as our shared Kubernetes offering APPUiO Cloud. For us, being a Product Owner is more than just filling the backlog based on stakeholder feedback - you can directly drive the business by working closely with Marketing & Sales, you own the product and are thus involved in the overall strategy and goal setting with your team, of which you are a permanent member.

Managed OpenShift and APPUiO Cloud Explained

• Managed OpenShift is our offering that provides dedicated managed OpenShift clusters on any infrastructure.
• APPUiO Cloud is based on Managed OpenShift, and provides software developers immediate 24/7 access to a hosting environment to run their applications.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to further evolve these offerings with a focus on more stability, scalability and enriching features to increase value for our customers. You’ll be part of a mature team working with Scrum and a dedicated Scrum Master.

Responsibilities summarized

• Acting as a Scrum Product Owner in a team that handles both customer service and product development.
• Owning and evolving your team's offerings, working closely with (Product) Marketing & Sales.
• Preparing and presenting work for the team and stakeholders.
• Supporting Solution Architects, Marketing, and Sales in promoting your offerings.
• Support our Account Managers in coordinating relevant customer onboarding projects.

Company culture

As an organization, we thrive on diversity and self-management, orienting ourselves on Agile and Sociocracy 3.0 principles. We emphasize transparency, collaboration, and common goals, valuing Scrum-like workflows in our tech teams. Decisions at VSHN are made collaboratively, valuing reasoned arguments over hierarchical positions - we trust in self-responsibility in everyone, in people who share the responsibility of their team, and that decisions happen with the subject-matter experts, in our teams where we face the day-to-day challenges while getting the best possible support from the wider organization.

Read more about how VSHN is unique in our handbook - one example of how much we value Transparency and live open source as an organization.

This job is for you if

You have:

• A technical background, preferably in those fields related to software development, application operations, Linux Server or Kubernetes.
• Strong interest in the field of DevOps, Free and Open Source Software, Linux, Cloud-native, and Kubernetes.
• Experience as a (Scrum) Product Owner, preferably for some kind of managed services / SaaS offerings.
• A good understanding of Agile and Scrum - while not insisting on doing Scrum strictly by the book, which we don't.
• Structured but pragmatic working and documentation approach, excellent organizational and coordination skills.
• A positive feeling within you when you hear, "Good enough for now, safe enough to try (until the next review)."
• Fluent in English and German communication.

You are excited to work in a company with self-managed teams, no bosses, a high degree of support, and opportunities for personal development, where reasoned arguments hold sway over hierarchical mandates and your work makes a real impact.

As a bonus

• You understand spoken Swiss German.
• You have worked in a role where customer work, product development, and day-to-day operations had to be balanced all the time.

At VSHN, we are open to hiring motivated individuals with varying levels of the above-mentioned experience as long as they demonstrate a strong commitment to learning and quickly applying new skills on the job. The remuneration for this role will be in line with our fixed salary policy, which applies universally across all roles.

What we offer

• VSHN offers great perks and great colleagues.
• If you’re interested, you can grow into new roles by taking on additional responsibilities, working within other roles, or even changing teams over time.
• We live in a culture that enables working remotely and from home (even before COVID-19), we have mandatory on-site events a few times a year, and in general, we love meeting at the office to connect and socialize.
• Like all VSHNeers, you receive a fixed monthly salary and phantom stock options in the company in a fully transparent salary system.

Please note: we don’t work with recruitment agencies, and we’re looking for people with permission to work in Switzerland (Swiss/EU citizens and Swiss residents/work visa holders).

Do you think this sounds interesting? Then hit the “Apply Now” button above, and let’s meet for a casual virtual cup of coffee!