Technical Product Owner - Patient Access Product Innovation

Valeris is a fully integrated life sciences commercialization partner that provides comprehensive solutions that span the entire healthcare value chain. Formed by the merger of PharmaCord and Mercalis, Valeris™ revolutionizes the path from life sciences innovation to real-life impact to build a world in which every patient gets the care they need. Valeris works on behalf of life sciences companies to improve the patient experience so that patients can access and adhere to critical medications. Backed by proven industry expertise, a deep commitment to patient care, the latest technology, and exceptionally talented team members, Valeris provides the data and strategic insights, patient support services and healthcare provider engagement tools to help life sciences companies successfully commercialize new products. Valeris provides commercialization solutions to more than 500 life sciences customers and has provided access and affordability support to millions of patients. The company is headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina and Jeffersonville, Indiana. To learn more about Valeris, please visit www.valeris.com.

The Technical Product Owner, Patient Access Product Innovation owns the backlog for the foundational, engineering-heavy work that every patient access product depends on: the shared integrations, data, workflow and configuration capabilities, and the security, reliability and auditability standards beneath them. You are the bridge between product direction and engineering: you turn platform needs into precise, buildable epics, stories, technical acceptance criteria and non-functional requirements, and you make sure engineering, architecture and Product Owners share one view of what is being built and why. Your customers are primarily internal: engineering, architecture, Product Owners, implementation and Operations teams.

This role sits on the Patient Access Product Innovation team and reports to the Product Manager, who sets product direction and priorities across the portfolio. You are a peer of the Product Owners: they own the business-facing product areas, and you own the technical foundations those areas are built on. You work in a tight pairing with engineering leads and architects, and you possess enough technical depth to review API contracts, challenge a design, and judge feasibility and risk without needing to write the code.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Backlog & Prioritization

• Own and prioritize the technical backlog for assigned platform domains, balancing new capability, technical debt, reliability, security and operational improvements against roadmap commitments, using value and risk as the ranking criteria.
• Translate platform and engineering needs from the Product Manager, Product Owners and architects into well-defined epics, stories, technical specifications and acceptance criteria that engineers can build efficiently with minimal iteration.
• Lead backlog refinement with engineering leads and squads on a regular cadence: clarify and size work, surface dependencies and technical risk, and keep at least two sprints of groomed, estimated work ready.
• Run the sprint cadence for the technical teams (planning, reviews, retrospectives) and accept completed work against technical acceptance criteria.
• Hold a regular roadmap review (at least quarterly) with the Product Manager, engineering and architecture for your domains, and re-sequence as dependencies, risks and priorities change.
• Define the business outcome each technical initiative is meant to move (for example, faster new-program setup, higher reuse of shared capabilities, or better reliability), the KPIs that will measure it and the baseline, before it is prioritized, and report results after release.

Technical Requirements & Design Partnership

• Define functional and non-functional requirements for your domains, including performance, scalability, availability, security, privacy and auditability, with measurable targets.
• Review API contracts, data models and integration designs with engineering and architecture; evaluate connector and integration feasibility and identify technical risks early.
• Participate in design reviews and architecture discussions, represent product priorities in technical trade-off decisions, and record decisions and their rationale.
• Lead technical discovery and spikes with engineering leads and internal platform consumers to inform backlog priorities and reduce uncertainty before work is committed.
• Define data, interface and configuration requirements so that new capabilities are built once and reused across programs, solving the problem for many customers rather than one.

Shared Capabilities & Cross-Team Dependencies

• Own the shared-capability view for your domains: what exists, who consumes it, what is planned, and where a request from a Product Owner is better solved once, for everyone.
• Work with Product Owners to translate their needs into technical requirements, and bring shared needs and boundary questions to the Product Manager instead of solving them in isolation.
• Coordinate dependencies across engineering teams, integration and data platforms, vendors and other product areas; keep them visible and escalate conflicts that cannot be resolved at team level.
• Partner with Compliance, Legal, Security and Operations on privacy, security, audit and regulatory requirements that shape the technical roadmap.

Release, Quality & Reliability

• Plan and coordinate technical releases with engineering and QA, including release notes, rollout and rollback considerations, and communication to internal consumers.
• Define test strategy expectations and acceptance gates with QA and engineering, and own readiness from technical acceptance through production.
• Track and report on platform health and delivery measures (defects, incidents, technical debt, adoption of shared capabilities, and engineering delivery flow as a health indicator) alongside the operational outcomes the work is meant to improve, and use them to shape priorities.
• Escalate technical risks, platform dependencies and roadmap gaps to Product leadership early, with options and a recommendation.

Technical Subject-Matter Expertise & Enablement

• Serve as the internal subject-matter expert for your technical domains, answering questions from Product Owners, implementation, Operations and engineering teams.
• Maintain current technical documentation and a 'what the platform does today' reference with engineering, and support onboarding of engineers and Product Owners to your domains.
• Mentor analysts and Product Owners on technical concepts as your scope grows.

AI-Enabled Ways of Working

• Use AI tools daily to accelerate technical discovery, requirements and documentation, and evaluate AI-enabled and automation capabilities for feasibility, data requirements and governance alongside engineering.

Standards & Accountabilities

• Utilize Valeris’s values as the driving force behind the team’s success.
• On time adherence to training deadlines for all corporate policies and procedures.
• Ensure all SOPs are followed with consistency.
• Perform other duties as assigned, including additional tasks or projects.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, you will help Valeris:

• Give engineering a prioritized, well-defined technical backlog whose stories build efficiently with minimal iteration and whose acceptance criteria hold at release.
• Deliver shared capabilities that Product Owners and implementation teams can reuse, shown in fewer one-off builds and faster new-program setup.
• Raise platform reliability, security and auditability by setting measurable non-functional targets and meeting them with each release.
• Surface technical risks and dependencies early enough that roadmap commitments change by decision, not by surprise.
• Give Product Owners and the Product Manager a trusted answer on what the platform does today, what is coming, and what it costs to change.

Qualifications:

Required Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical or related field, or equivalent experience, required.
• 4 to 8 years of total experience in technical product ownership or product management, including at least 3 years owning a backlog for engineering teams on a software platform, API, integration or data product.
• Working knowledge of how software is built and run: SDLC, APIs (REST, webhooks, authentication and authorization), data models, integration patterns, environments, release management, and observability concepts.
• Demonstrated ability to turn technical needs into epics, stories, specifications, non-functional requirements and acceptance criteria that engineers can build efficiently with minimal iteration.
• Ability to review a design or API contract, challenge trade-offs with engineers and architects, and explain technical constraints to non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to assess each request as an 'n of many' rather than an 'n of one': find the problem behind a request and design a shared, reusable technical solution that serves many programs, not one.
• Strong command of agile delivery practices and tools such as Jira or Azure DevOps.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, and hands-on experience building with AI-assisted tools (for example, prototyping with Claude, Copilot or ChatGPT), not just using their output day to day.

Preferred Experience

• 5 or more years of technical product ownership, including at least one platform or integration capability shipped and run in production, and the ability to contribute to architecture and design reviews as a peer of engineers and architects.
• Healthcare, pharmaceutical patient services, hub services, specialty pharmacy or payer operations, with working knowledge of patient access workflows and PHI handling.
• Experience with integration platforms or middleware, workflow or rules engines, and configurable multi-client software.
• Familiarity with healthcare interoperability standards (HL7 FHIR, X12, NCPDP) and with security and compliance frameworks such as HIPAA and SOC 2.
• Experience owning backlogs for AI-enabled, agentic or automation-driven capabilities in a regulated environment.
• Prior experience as a software engineer, solutions or integration architect, or technical business analyst.
• Experience mentoring analysts or associates.

Physical Demands & Work Environment

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee is frequently required to sit for long periods of time, use hands to type, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms. Prefer candidates who can type at least 35 words per minute with 97% accuracy.

• Although very minimal, flexibility to travel as needed is preferred.

• This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, etc.

Why Work for Valeris?

We’re committed to supporting the well-being and success of our team members. As part of our organization, full-time employees can expect:

• Medical, dental, and vision plans, including HSA- and FSA-eligible options, with Valeris contributing toward premium costs

• Additional health support, including telehealth and Employee Assistance Program (EAP) services

• Company match on Health Savings Account contributions

• Free Basic Life and AD&D coverage equal to your annual earnings, with a minimum of $50,000 and a maximum of $300,000

• Company-paid Short-Term Disability coverage, with the option to purchase Long-Term Disability

• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan with 100% match on the first 5% you contribute, with immediate vesting

• Paid Time Off (PTO) and Sick Leave to support work-life balance

• Team members receive nine paid holidays plus two floating holidays

• Opportunities for advancement in a company that supports personal and professional growth

• A challenging, stimulating work environment that encourages new ideas

• Work for a company that values diversity and makes deliberate efforts to create an inclusive workplace

• A mission-driven, inclusive culture where your work makes a meaningful impact

Any offer of employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a background check and, depending on the position, a drug screen in accordance with company standards. Please note that this job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, or activities associated with the position. Responsibilities and tasks may be modified at any time, with or without notice.

Our Commitment to Equal Opportunity

At Valeris, we don’t just accept difference – we celebrate it, support it and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. Valeris is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.