Product Owner / Product Delivery Lead
- Location
- Utrecht (hybrid working possible)
- Employment type
- Full-time (32–40 hours)
- Team
- Software Development
Overview
The role
At Awareways, we help organizations make security and privacy tangible for every employee. Behind that mission is a small, capable engineering team building the platforms that deliver that change every day, for clients across Europe.
We don’t believe in management bloat or corporate bureaucracy. With an engineering team of 6–8 developers, we don’t need a separate Product Owner and a separate Team Lead to discuss resources. Instead, we are adding a Product Owner / Product Delivery Lead to combine owning the train, with controlling the track.
Your job in one sentence: Drive product-led scaling by owning both the product backlog and the delivery engine to ensure high-quality, predictable output.
Your primary objective is to make software delivery predictable. By creating transparency, structure and a reliable delivery rhythm, you enable the business to make better roadmap decisions while creating the conditions for the development team to take more ownership and autonomy.
You’ll partner closely with our Head of Technical Development (Mati Kochen, who owns the long-term technical strategy and architecture), leaving you fully empowered to own the “What, Why, and When” of our platform’s evolution.
What you’ll do
Own the roadmap & backlog. Translate our high-level vision and the needs of our diverse client base into sharp executable plans and epics. You create the clarity needed to prevent ‘fuzzy meetings’.
Grow the people. You run 1-on-1s that go beyond status updates. You lead personal development conversations with each team member, care about what the team needs to grow, and create the environment where that’s possible. You have highly developed coaching skills, enabling you to spot when you need to instruct, facilitate or let someone figure it out for themselves. You build a productive and positive team culture by being an inspiring and available leader on a daily basis. The goal: coach the team towards continuous improvement, ownership and predictable delivery.
Define the readiness. You are responsible for the definition of ready. If a feature request from the business or client isn’t technically or functionally clear, it doesn’t come into the team’s sprint.
Run the delivery engine. You own the process: sprint planning, capacity management, refinements, retrospectives. You keep work moving, remove blockers before people even feel stuck, and guard the Definition of Ready. You track velocity and delivery data and report on team performance.
Bridge the gaps. Between the team and the rest of the organization. Between what a client needs and what we’re building. Between a stuck ticket and the person who can unblock it. You know when to escalate, when to solve it yourself, and when to connect two people who need to talk. We have strong frontend and backend domain experts. Your job is to make sure nothing falls through the cracks between them and the broader organization.
Support the client experience at key moments. You offer or organize support for the onboarding of high-profile clients. You are present for the first implementation of new features. When an operational escalation comes in, you step up. You don’t have all the answers, but you make sure the right people are in the room and the client feels heard.
Keep knowledge alive. Own and continuously improve the software delivery system (tools, processes, documentation) and make sure critical knowledge doesn’t disappear when someone’s on holiday. You align regularly with other Product Owners to keep engineering and product pulling in the same direction.
What you’re not directly responsible for
(but your input is highly appreciated)
- Formal contractual HR paperwork — while you track performance, drive culture and coach the team, formal contract and salary decisions sit at the Management Team level.
- Long-term product vision — that’s the Head of Technical Development’s domain.
- First-line client support tickets — those don’t land with you.
What we’re looking for
The ideal candidate moves comfortably between business, product, and engineering, and helps the team grow while delivering value. It’s someone who can balance business prioritization with the needs of the engineering team.
Product team experience & culture driver. You have lived and breathed in a true B2B SaaS or product environment. You know the difference between shipping a series of one-off projects and sustainably evolving a core product. You know what a high-performing team culture looks like from the inside and know what you can do to improve that culture by your own actions.
Leadership and motivation skills. You switch leadership and communication styles. You understand interpersonal dynamics, take charge when a decision needs to be made and care about the needs of the team.
Multidirectional communication. You communicate clearly, proactively, and transparently. You manage expectations skillfully in all directions: to the leadership team, to your colleagues in client relations, and within the team to the engineers. English is required, our team works in English. Dutch is a genuine plus in a company and client base that is largely Dutch-speaking.
Technically literate, ideally hands-on. Our stack is PHP/Symfony with event sourcing and CQRS on the backend, and Vue.js on the frontend. You don’t need to be an expert — we have strong engineers who own those domains. Being able to follow a technical discussion, spot when something could be simplified, or help someone think through an approach makes a real difference. If you’ve shipped code in a past life, that counts.
Process-minded but not bureaucratic. You believe in agile as a tool, not a religion. You’ll adapt the process to serve the team, not the other way around.
What we offer
- Plenty of room to grow — an exciting role with real ownership, 35 colleagues with vastly different expertises and many opportunities for personal and professional growth in a young (12 year), mission-driven organization.
- Personal development — a serious focus on personal development, including an external assessment at the start and regularly scheduled moments to discuss your growth.
- A comfortable work environment — a pleasant office in Utrecht with the option for hybrid working, including focus days from home.
- On a mission — we are on a mission to build a secure digital future, one individual at a time.
- Mobility — travel expenses are reimbursed. If you commute from outside Utrecht, you can get a Swapfiets bicycle to cycle from Utrecht Centraal to the office.
- Good equipment — we provide a MacBook (Pro) and iPhone.
- A healthy and productive office culture — daily communal lunch (including a healthy salad), Friday kroket lunch to celebrate the weekend, and regular drinks to celebrate our accomplishments.
- Salary — €4,750–€7,000 gross per month (based on a 40-hour work week), depending on experience, skills, and education.
- Hours per week — 32–40
- For later — a good pension plan with the option for advantageous extra personal contributions.
- Days off — 25 vacation days.
- Strategic trip — an annual off-site retreat to work on our vision and strategy, including social time, drinks, and karaoke.
- SAR — the possibility to participate in our Stock Appreciation Rights program after one year.
Interested?
Send your CV and a short note on why this role speaks to you to mati@awareways.com.
Timeline: Due to holidays and depending on the response, we will be inviting candidates in two rounds: the first half of July and the second half of August.
