Product Owner

Product Owner, NDA Solutions

Information Technology · Atlanta, GA (Hybrid) · Full-time, Exempt

National Distribution Alliance (NDA) runs several platforms supporting the group purchasing organization, its operators, and its supplier programs, and this role owns them. The near-term job is integration: bringing systems that overlap toward one coherent experience instead of several disconnected ones.

You’ll set the roadmap, decide what gets built next, hold the technology partners to it, and stand behind the data and reporting that NDA and its Suppliers make decisions on.

The role is designed to work as one of a pair, alongside a counterpart Product Owner covering the National Distribution Alliance (NDA). You’ll each own your own business unit, back each other up, and work to one shared set of standards so a capability needed by both gets built once. Where that counterpart role isn’t in place yet, you’ll carry an agreed level of support for the other business unit in the meantime, scoped with IT and business unit leadership rather than left to absorb informally.

We’re a cooperative of independent foodservice distributors. Our Members compete against companies many times their size, and they win by staying closer to their customers and moving faster. UniPro gives them the scale, buying power, supplier relationships, and increasingly the data and technology that would otherwise be out of reach.

These platforms are how Members, distributors, and operators actually do business with us. Keeping them accurate and dependable is what this role is for.

Own the platforms and the roadmap

• Act as the primary business owner for NDA’s platforms, making sure each one supports its reporting, operational, and data quality objectives.
• Keep a prioritized enhancement roadmap, informed by talking to operators, distributors, Members, Suppliers, and internal users rather than only by whatever lands in the request queue, and be clear about the trade-offs.
• Push the portfolio toward fewer and better systems: consolidate overlapping systems into one coherent experience, and drive newly implemented platforms from launch to dependable.
• Run the technology partner relationships as the main point of contact for enhancement requests, issues, testing, implementation status, and platform updates. Lead evaluations, renewals, and statements of work, and hold partners to the scope, timelines, and service levels agreed.
• Turn business needs into clear requirements and acceptance criteria, coordinate testing and rollout, and accept or reject releases against the criteria agreed up front.
• Lead recurring stakeholder meetings, including agendas, action item tracking, and communicating decisions.
• Decide what success looks like for each significant release and report afterward on whether you got there. If something ships and nobody uses it, that’s yours to fix.

Keep the data right

• Run the daily, weekly, and monthly validations that keep platform data complete, timely, accurate, and ready to report on, along with the mapping and reconciliation behind reliable reporting.
• Chase missing, late, incomplete, or inaccurate submissions, find the root cause, and get it corrected with distributors and other data providers.
• Audit incoming files and data sources, troubleshoot file errors, and coordinate corrections and resubmissions. Escalate anything that could affect reporting accuracy, operational visibility, supplier programs, or business decisions.
• Maintain master data integrity across product, distributor, operator, and Member attributes, and own the data standards, documentation, governance procedures, and quality thresholds.
• Work with our data team so definitions, metrics, and thresholds stay consistent with UniPro’s wider reporting.
• Validate new reports, dashboards, and calculations before release, spot check live reporting against source data, and automate the recurring checks where you can.

Support the people using it

• Own the support model: support inboxes, triage expectations, response times, and the escalation path to the technology partner. Investigate and resolve platform, workflow, and access issues.
• Log, prioritize, and manage open tasks in the tools we use, currently Monday.com, so priority and status stay visible.
• Onboard distributors, operators, and units, confirm data is flowing and reporting correctly, and manage offboarding and distributor transitions so reporting stays continuous.
• Support access requests and permissions in line with UniPro standards, and provide training, documentation, and release communication so people are ready for what changes.
• Represent business unit data standards and requirements in distributor, operator, Member, Supplier, and partner discussions.

Work as one of a pair

• Back up the counterpart Product Owner, keeping enough working familiarity with their platforms, validations, and partner relationships to cover during absence, peak periods, or turnover.
• Keep documentation, runbooks, and standards current to the level a peer could pick up without a handover conversation. Documentation is a deliverable here, not an afterthought.
• Work to one shared set of data standards and definitions across business units, and raise differences for resolution instead of maintaining your own variant.
• Support the platforms of UniPro’s other business units and shared services as needed, and take on or hand off platforms as the portfolio changes.

• A bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Systems, Data Management, a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Three to six or more years in data operations, data quality, analytics support, product ownership, or systems administration.
• Experience owning or administering an enterprise platform on behalf of the business, including gathering requirements and managing an enhancement backlog.
• Experience working with POS data, operational data sets, large-scale data feeds, and reporting systems.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills: the ability to trace a reported number back to its source data and judge whether that data is good enough to report on.
• Strong attention to detail, and the instinct to chase a data anomaly to its root cause rather than patching the symptom.
• The ability to manage multiple priorities on deadlines and keep your commitments transparent.
• Clear communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders, including declining a request and explaining the trade-off behind it.
• A willingness to work as one of a pair: to document for a peer, cover for a peer, and accept a shared standard over a locally preferred one.

We’d rather find the right person and build the rest. Strong fundamentals and sound judgment count for more with us than checking every line above, and you’ll have direct support from the VP of Member Technology and the VP of IT Development, Operations and Data to grow into the full scope.

• Foodservice distribution or a related industry.
• Enterprise data platforms, reporting systems, or SFTP-based data exchanges.
• Validating reports, analyzing discrepancies, and troubleshooting data quality issues.
• Writing requirements, acceptance criteria, and release communication.
• Working with a software vendor or implementation partner on scope, delivery, and escalation.
• Working knowledge of SQL or comparable query tools.
• An understanding of data privacy and security considerations for Member and Supplier data.
• The platforms we use, currently including Microsoft 365, Snowflake, and Monday.com.

• Real ownership. The roadmap for a business unit’s platforms is yours, not a queue you work through.
• Direct access to the business. NDAG leadership works with this role directly.
• Your work gets used. Distributors, operators, Members, and our own staff are on these platforms daily.
• You won’t be on an island. The role is built as one of a pair, with a peer who knows your systems well enough to cover them.
• Room to grow, with support from IT and Member Technology leadership to develop into the full scope.

• Reports to the Vice President, Member Technology, and works directly with NDA leadership on business priorities.
• Based in Atlanta, GA on a hybrid schedule. We’ll consider fully remote for the right person.
• Occasional travel, under 10 percent.
• Occasional work outside normal hours to support projects or issues.
• Other duties as assigned.