Senior Product Owner – Enterprise API Strategy & Ecosystem Enablement

M&T Bank•Buffalo, NY

About The Position

M&T is scaling its enterprise API platform to enable Digital Assets, Open Banking, and repeatable client and fintech integrations. The Senior Product Owner owns the end-to-end product strategy, roadmap, and value delivery for enterprise API capabilities, operating at Senior PO scope across multiple teams and stakeholders. This role defines the vision, outcomes, and governance for APIs as a strategic platform, partnering closely with Digital Assets leadership, Open Banking stakeholders, Commercial Banking partners, and enterprise risk and technology teams. This role operates beyond a single backlog—shaping portfolio-level priorities, aligning across Product Owners, and ensuring API capabilities are secure, compliant, scalable, and reusable across the bank.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 10 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 14 years’ higher education and/or work experience, including a minimum of 10 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience
Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 10 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 14 years’ higher education and/or work experience, including a minimum of 10 years’ business, analytical, technical and/or product experience
Minimum of 7 years of experience in Product Ownership or Product Management for platform or enterprise capabilities.
Demonstrated ownership and production delivery of bank APIs, with hands-on experience managing external-facing REST APIs in financial services, encompassing API contract design (OpenAPI/Swagger), versioning, backward compatibility, and security and customer consent requirements.
Proven success translating multi-stakeholder strategy into executable roadmaps.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with senior stakeholders.
Experience operating in regulated environments.
Ability to influence without authority in matrixed organizations.
Ability to focus on customer and business outcomes vs. technical “how”

Nice To Haves

Experience with Open Banking and consent-driven data sharing (e.g., Dodd-Frank 1033).
Experience with enterprise developer portals, API catalogs, and documentation standards.
Background in B2B, Commercial Banking, embedded banking, or partner platforms.
Familiarity with digital assets or emerging payments technologies.

Responsibilities

Define and own the enterprise API product vision and roadmap spanning Digital Assets and stablecoin enablement, Dodd-Frank 1033 and Open Banking, Commercial Banking and Treasury Management APIs, and fintech and partner integrations.
Translate enterprise and line-of-business strategy into sequenced, outcome-oriented product roadmaps aligned to business objectives and value delivery.
Operate at the portfolio and ART level, defining features, epics, and cross-team dependencies rather than only team-level stories.
Own the API platform product model, ensuring services are reusable, scalable, and compliant by design.
Drive developer experience outcomes, including API documentation standards, onboarding patterns, and developer portal and sandbox requirements.
Identify business and/or regulatory opportunities and appropriate resource requirements to pursue solutions for those opportunities
Establish and evolve API governance and standards aligned with enterprise principles, security, and regulatory expectations.
Influence senior stakeholders through clear decision framing, tradeoff articulation, and value-based prioritization.
Partner with engineering and architecture to ensure APIs are secure, compliant, and designed for long-term reuse and extensibility.
Ensure delivery aligns with Digital Operational standards and enterprise risk appetite, internal controls, and audit expectations.
Focus on outcomes over outputs using metrics and feedback loops.
Provide direction and alignment to other Product Owners in the API ecosystem.
Write user stories and groom the backlog in partnership with the team.
Specify acceptance criteria for each user story in support of moving the team to Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD).
Drive consistency in prioritization, standards, and delivery practices across teams.
Contribute to Product Owner maturity through coaching and shared practices.