Agile Product Owner Lead Analyst - HIH - Evernorth

INTRODUCTION TO EVERNORTH:  Evernorth Health Services India, established in Hyderabad in 2024, is an innovation hub for Evernorth Health Services, the pharmacy, care and benefits division of The Cigna Group. The innovation hub will support innovation-focused areas, such as generative AI, product development, process improvement, analytics, and software engineering across The Cigna Group and its businesses.  Evernorth Health Services India builds on The Cigna Group’s existing presence in India. About Evernorth Health Services: Evernorth Health Services (Evernorth) is the pharmacy, care and benefits solution division of The Cigna Group - a Fortune 16 global health company with 75,000 employees, 186 million customers in more than 30 countries and jurisdictions around the world. Evernorth exists to make the prediction, prevention, and treatment of illness and disease more accessible to millions of people. We do this by creating and connecting premier health services offerings, such as benefits management, pharmacy, care solutions, insights and intelligence. About Cigna: The Cigna Group is a global health company committed to improving the health and vitality of individuals and communities around the world and includes products and services marketed under its Cigna Healthcare and Evernorth Health Services subsidiaries. Cigna Healthcare is the health benefits provider of The Cigna Group, serving customers and clients through its U.S. Employer, U.S. Government, and International Health business. Evernorth Health Services is the pharmacy, care and benefits solution division of The Cigna Group.

The Technical Product Owner is responsible for translating business goals into clear, actionable technical requirements and ensuring delivery teams build solutions that maximize customer and business value. This role bridges product strategy, architecture, engineering, and operations by managing the product backlog, defining user stories and acceptance criteria, prioritizing technical and functional work, and driving execution across agile teams. Successful Technical Product Owners combine strong product judgment, technical fluency, stakeholder management, and data-driven decision-making.  

Key Responsibilities  

Own and maintain the product backlog for technical and functional features, enablers, integrations, and technical debt.  

Partner with business stakeholders, architects, engineers, and designers to define product vision, roadmap, and release priorities.  

Translate business needs into epics, features, and user stories with clear acceptance criteria and technical context.  

Prioritize backlog items based on business value, customer impact, risk, dependencies, and implementation complexity.  

Work closely with engineering teams during sprint planning, refinement, demos, and retrospectives to ensure alignment and delivery readiness.  

Clarify requirements, answer team questions, and make timely tradeoff decisions to keep delivery moving.  

Align product decisions with enterprise architecture, security, compliance, reliability, and scalability requirements.  

Coordinate across teams to manage dependencies, integrations, and release readiness.  

Use customer feedback, analytics, operational metrics, and testing results to refine priorities and improve outcomes.  

Communicate progress, risks, decisions, and roadmap changes to stakeholders and leadership.  

Apply specification-driven development (SDD) practices and AI-assisted tools to generate specifications and develop prototypes that validate business asks and expected business value.  

Required Qualifications  

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Sc ience , Engineering, Information Systems, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.  

5+ years of experience in Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Analyst, or related delivery roles in software or digital product environments.  

Experience working in Agile/Scrum or   SAFe   environments with cross-functional delivery teams.  

Strong understanding of software development lifecycle, APIs, integrations, cloud platforms, data flows, and system dependencies.  

Proven ability to write user stories, define acceptance criteria, and manage/prioritize a product backlog.  

Experience collaborating with engineering, architecture, QA, UX, and business stakeholders.  

Strong conceptual, analytical, problem-solving, communication, and facilitation skills, including whiteboarding, written documentation, and executive-level presentations.  

Experience with delivery and product management tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, or similar platforms.  

Familiarity with specification-driven development (SDD) and experience using AI-assisted tools such as   OpenSpec , Spec-Kit, Superpowers, Cursor, Claude Code, or equivalent platforms to generate specifications and develop prototypes that validate business asks and expected business value.  

Preferred Qualifications  

Certification such as CSPO,   SAFe   POPM, CSM, or equivalent agile/product credential.  

Experience in regulated enterprise environments such as healthcare, financial services, insurance, or other compliance-driven industries.  

Working knowledge of cloud services, platform architecture, data governance,   DevSecOps , and observability practices.  

Experience supporting modernization initiatives, platform migrations, or digital transformation programs.  

Prior technical background in software engineering, systems analysis, solution architecture, or technical business analysis.  

Core Skills  

Backlog management and prioritization  

User story development and acceptance criteria definition  

Executive communication, whiteboarding, and written documentation  

Technical requirement analysis  

Agile planning and release management  

Dependency management and risk mitigation  

Data-informed decision-making  

Customer-centric thinking  

Cross-functional leadership without direct authority  

Experience with SDD and AI-assisted spec/prototype generation tools to accelerate requirements definition and business-value validation  

Success Measures  

Clear, prioritized, and delivery-ready backlog aligned to roadmap objectives  

Improved sprint predictability and release quality  

Reduced ambiguity in requirements and fewer delivery blockers  

Strong alignment between business needs and technical implementation  

Positive stakeholder and team feedback on collaboration and clarity  

Measurable business and customer outcomes from shipped features

Location & Hours of Work     Full-time position, working 40 hours per week. Primarily based in the Innovation Hub in Hyderabad, India, with flexibility to work remotely as required. 

Equal Opportunity Statement    Evernorth is an Equal Opportunity Employer actively encouraging and supporting organization-wide involvement of staff in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to educate, inform and advance both internal practices and external work with diverse client populations. 

About Evernorth Health Services Evernorth Health Services, a division of The Cigna Group, creates pharmacy, care and benefit solutions to improve health and increase vitality. We relentlessly innovate to make the prediction, prevention and treatment of illness and disease more accessible to millions of people. Join us in driving growth and improving lives.