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