Freelance Product Owner

Freelance Project: Product Owner 

Start Date: ASAP

Working Regime: Full-time contract job, minimum 3-4 days onsite per week

Location: Mechelen region

Languages: English mandatory, Dutch strongly preferred

Seniority: Senior, minimum 5 years of relevant experience

Role Overview

The organization is looking for an experienced Product Owner / Team Manager to lead a team responsible for applications supporting the inventory, design, build and maintenance of HFC and fiber networks.

The role combines IT, engineering and telecom infrastructure. You will define the long-term product vision and roadmap, improve delivery quality and operational stability, and guide a multidisciplinary team through modernization and transformation. The assignment also includes people management, stakeholder alignment and vendor management.

Key Responsibilities

✅ Product Ownership & Strategy

- Define and execute the product vision and roadmap for Network Design Tooling.

- Translate strategic objectives into actionable team goals and priorities.

- Own, maintain and prioritize the product backlog.

- Manage the full product lifecycle and overall product health.

✅ Team Leadership & Delivery

- Lead and coach a multidisciplinary team of analysts, developers and external resources.

- Take ownership of people management and HR responsibilities for the core team.

- Drive delivery excellence, quality improvements and operational stability.

- Monitor capacity, budget and team performance together with leadership.

✅ Stakeholder & Vendor Management

- Manage external delivery partners and vendors in Belgium and abroad.

- Align stakeholders across different business and technology domains.

- Prioritize initiatives and influence stakeholders in a complex environment with competing demands.

✅ Modernization

- Contribute to the modernization of the application landscape.

- Support initiatives involving cloud adoption, CI/CD and automation.

Profile & Required Experience

Professional Background

- Master's degree or equivalent through experience.

- Minimum 5 years of experience as Product Owner, Product Lead or in a similar leadership role.

- Experience managing and coaching multidisciplinary teams.

- Proven experience working with software development teams and external vendors.

- Strong stakeholder management, communication and influencing skills.

- Experience working in complex enterprise environments.

- Ability to define a clear long-term vision while remaining hands-on in execution.

- Experience within telecom, utilities, network infrastructure or engineering environments is highly valued.

Technical & Functional Skills

- Product Ownership within an IT or telecom-related environment.

- Backlog management and prioritization.

- Agile product delivery knowledge.

- Ability to work effectively with developers, analysts and technical teams.

- Vendor and partner management.

- Knowledge of fiber, HFC, network inventory or network design processes is a plus.

- Experience with Physical Network Inventory tooling or similar network design applications is a plus.

- Knowledge of OSS/BSS environments is a plus.

- Experience with modernization initiatives involving cloud, CI/CD and test automation is a plus.

Languages

- Dutch: Strongly preferred

- English: Fluent and mandatory