Freelance Product Owner

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 include: product ownership and 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 and 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 and 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.

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 and 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.