Bridgenext is seeking a Product Owner / Senior Business Analyst with demonstrated delivery experience on enterprise retirement recordkeeping platforms (such as Fidelity, Empower, Voya, Principal, or equivalent) for a leading global financial services client's U.S. retirement business within its Global Wealth and Asset Management division. The role requires deep expertise in defined contribution plan administration and participant and plan sponsor journeys, and the consulting posture to drive stakeholder alignment across business, operations, compliance, and technology teams.
The Product Owner / Sr. Business Analyst will own the backlog and requirements for the client's retirement platform capabilities. You will translate business strategy and regulatory change into prioritized epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria, guide delivery teams through build, testing, and release, and make the product decisions that determine adoption and business outcomes. You will not write code; you will set product direction and make the decisions that determine whether the product succeeds.
Key Responsibilities:
- Own and prioritize the product backlog across participant, plan sponsor, and advisor-facing retirement capabilities, balancing business value, regulatory deadlines, risk, and delivery effort.
- Lead discovery across business, operations, compliance, and technology stakeholder groups to understand current-state recordkeeping and servicing processes, identify pain points, and reconcile competing priorities.
- Elicit and document business requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, and data mappings for the defined contribution plan lifecycle, including enrollment, contributions, investment elections, loans, withdrawals and distributions, rollovers, and plan onboarding or conversions.
- Perform gap and fit analysis between current and target state platforms, including vendor platform configuration, migration, and modernization initiatives.
- Translate regulatory and legislative changes (such as SECURE Act, SECURE 2.0, ERISA, DOL, and IRS requirements) into platform requirements in partnership with Compliance and Legal.
- Define MVP scope and release roadmap, what is in, what is explicitly out, and why, balancing rapid time-to-value with long-term product vision.
- Partner with scrum teams through sprint planning, backlog refinement, demos, and PI planning; manage dependencies across platform, integration, data, and vendor teams.
- Design for upstream and downstream integrations without assuming control over them, including payroll feeds, trustee and custodian systems, third-party administrators (TPAs), and advisor platforms.
- Lead UAT strategy, test scenarios, defect triage, release readiness, and go-live support, ensuring changes meet compliance and audit expectations.
- Use participant behavior data, call-driver analysis, and sponsor feedback to shape digital experience improvements and measure outcomes through defined KPIs.
- Identify top risks and design mitigations around regulatory deadlines, data conversion and reconciliation, stakeholder alignment, and operational readiness.
- Maintain requirements traceability and clear documentation, and communicate status, risks, and trade-offs to senior business and technology leaders.
Workplace: Open to applicants in the greater Boston area willing to work hybrid - in office 3 days per week.
Must Have Skills:
- 8+ years of experience as a Product Owner or Senior Business Analyst, with at least 4 years focused on U.S. defined contribution retirement or workplace savings.
- Hands-on delivery experience on an enterprise retirement recordkeeping or participant servicing platform (such as Fidelity, Empower, Voya, Principal, Vanguard, Alight, Transamerica, Relius, or equivalent). Candidates must have directly owned requirements, backlog, or features on the platform itself, not simply worked at a firm that operates one.
- Deep fluency in defined contribution concepts: 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plan design, eligibility, auto-enrollment and auto-escalation, employer match, vesting, loans, hardship withdrawals, RMDs, rollovers, QDIA, and nondiscrimination testing.
- Proven experience translating regulatory mandates (such as SECURE and SECURE 2.0) into platform requirements and delivering them on schedule.
- Proven experience as a Product Owner in Agile/Scrum or SAFe environments, including backlog ownership, story writing, and prioritization frameworks.
- Strong consulting posture: ability to lead stakeholder workshops, navigate ambiguity, build consensus across business and IT, and handle pushback constructively.
- Excellent communication skills, able to translate business needs into clear technical requirements and technical constraints into business terms.
- Proven ability to scope MVPs under tight timelines while preserving long-term scalability and extensibility.
- Strong analytical skills, including working knowledge of SQL for data validation and analysis.
Preferred Skills:
- Experience with participant and plan sponsor digital experiences, including web portals, mobile apps, and self-service enrollment and distribution journeys.
- Experience with platform conversions, client onboarding, or vendor platform implementations in the retirement space.
- Familiarity with retirement integrations such as payroll and HRIS feeds, trust and custody, TPA data exchange, and NSCC/DTCC processing.
- Exposure to managed accounts, retirement income solutions, in-plan annuities, target date funds, and collective investment trusts (CITs).
- Familiarity with Power BI or Tableau, and designing reporting for non-technical business users.
- Working experience with Jira, Confluence, and design or prototyping tools such as Figma.
- Certifications such as CSPO, SAFe POPM, or CBAP; retirement credentials such as CRPS, CRC, or ERPA are an asset.
- GenAI experience is an asset, including use of AI to accelerate requirements drafting, test case generation, or impact analysis.
Bridgenext is an Equal Opportunity Employer
US citizens and those authorized to work in the US are encouraged to apply
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