Product Owner

Meet Athena, the Home Loan Wrecker

Athena launched in 2019 with a simple mission: help Aussie borrowers save money and pay down their home loans faster. Our digital mortgage platform radically simplifies the application process, passing on the savings to customers.

Since then, we've grown. We've built Australia's first cloud-native home loan platform covering the full value chain - acquire, originate, service, and fund. And we've expanded our focus beyond direct customers, also partnering with brokers to bring a broad range of lending solutions to more Australians, including specialised lending products that meet diverse borrower needs.

Athena has been recognised with multiple consumer lending and industry awards including Canstar Outstanding Value and Innovation Excellence awards, RateCity and Mozo awards, and Fintech Lender and Fintech CEO of the year.

The Role

We’re looking for a high-performing, delivery-driven Product Owner/Senior Product Owner to lead execution across our origination platform and broker channels.

You’ll sit at the centre of Product, Credit, Sales, Risk, Operations, and Technology — bringing clarity to what needs to be built, why it matters, and how it gets delivered.

Working closely with the Head of Product for Origination & Channels, you will translate strategy into sprint-ready execution and drive continuous improvement across your squad.

What you’re responsible for:

• Squad Product Ownership
  • Be the Product Owner within your squad, bringing clarity to priorities and outcomes.
  • Create alignment on what is being built and why.
  • Lead the squad in discovering the most optimal way to build what has been prioritized.
  • Act as a multiplier for your squad and stakeholders, fostering strong collaboration.
  • Embed Athena’s values and create a high-performance delivery culture.
  • Identify and implement process improvements to increase squad velocity and quality.
• Backlog Management & Prioritisation
  • Maintain a high-quality, outcome-aligned backlog.
  • Lead squad readiness via a rolling 3-sprint ready view with refined and estimated work.
  • Manage cross-squad dependencies and optimise sequencing for delivery.
  • Optimise sprint velocity through disciplined scoping and flow management.
• Product Delivery
  • Lead sprint ceremonies including planning, refinement, stand-ups and retros.
  • Partner with Design and Engineering leadership to deliver incremental product enhancements.
  • Work closely with Testing/ QA to ensure acceptance criteria and expected outcomes are met.
  • Provide clear and timely delivery and release updates to stakeholders, identifying and escalating risks, dependencies and scope challenges early.
• Product Planning & Strategy
  • Partner with the Head of Product, Origination & Channels to refine and execute roadmap initiatives.
  • Translate high-level vision into MVPs and incremental releases.
  • Contribute to shaping delivery approaches that maximise value.
• Product Maintenance & Operational Excellence
  • Analyse incidents and issues to support root cause identification and resolution.
  • Prioritise fixes and improvements within sprint backlogs.
  • Own and prioritise the operational improvement backlog.
  • Balance roadmap initiatives with optimisation and operational improvements.
• User Story Creation & Analysis
  • Collaborate with stakeholders across Operations, Credit, Risk and Sales to deeply understand requirements.
  • Translate business needs into clear, well-defined user stories and acceptance criteria.
  • Apply strong analytical and data skills to inform decisions and prioritisation.
  • Develop strong domain knowledge across Origination & Channels.

What we're looking for

• 4–7 years in Product Owner or delivery-led product roles.
• Experience in fintech, lending or financial services strongly preferred.
• Strong backlog management and agile execution capability.
• Demonstrated experience improving sprint velocity and delivery flow.
• Strong analytical capability and comfort working with data.
• Comfortable working with a wide range of internal customers.
• Thrives in fast-paced, scaling environments.

You Are

• Delivery-driven and accountable for outcomes.
• Structured and organised with strong attention to detail.
• Operationally sharp with a bias for efficiency and flow.
• Collaborative and influential across stakeholder groups.
• Growth-minded and looking for ways to enhance and improve current state.

What Athena offers

• Inclusive, Flexible and casual working environment
• Hybrid working with HQ Anchor Days in award winning office space
• Wellbeing program to support your physical, mental, social and financial health
• Perks program with access to discounts to every day expenses
• Fantastic team culture with monthly events

You'll be joining an experienced team, passionate about being best in class in everything we do. We have a relaxed and fun atmosphere where you can bring your unique self and skills to help us all grow as a team. Be great, be you, play nice.

At Athena we are committed to a workplace that embraces diversity, equality, and inclusion. Athenians are free to let their own brand of freak fly.

Please be sure to add [email protected] to your contact list to ensure delivery of all correspondence from us.