Staff/Principal Product Manager, Technical (HHS)

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists. The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, product managers shape vision, set priorities, align stakeholders, and support healthy teams. Technical product managers go further by working closely with engineering and infrastructure teams to ensure secure, scalable, and resilient delivery. You’ll collaborate with researchers, designers, engineers, and government partners to understand problems, define outcomes, and deliver solutions. At the core, your job is to decide what to build next, why it matters, and how to get it into production.

In this role, you’ll be part of a major modernization effort at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). You’ll guide multidisciplinary squads delivering secure, modern, and user-centered digital services at enterprise scale. You’ll balance user needs with policy and technical constraints, shape product roadmaps, and help federal partners build lasting product management capabilities.

What you’ll do

• Lead a multidisciplinary team of engineers, designers, researchers, and subject matter experts to deliver high-impact products and services
• Translate user and partner needs into a product strategy — vision, objectives, success measures, roadmap, and backlog
• Manage scope and direction from discovery and prototyping to minimum viable product (MVP) and scaled solutions
• Write and prioritize user stories, refine backlog items, and plan releases with an eye toward continuous delivery
• Support agile rhythms — planning, reviews, retros, and stakeholder check-ins — that help the team learn and adapt quickly
• Use data, research, and feedback to inform product decisions, shape Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and key performance indicators (KPIs), and adjust priorities
• Partner closely with engineering teams to ensure infrastructure, security, and compliance needs are integrated from the start
• Navigate organizational and policy constraints creatively while keeping delivery moving forward
• Work directly with government partners to transfer product practices and technical decision-making skills

What we're looking for

Minimum qualifications

• Strong understanding of lean and agile product practices, and how to apply them at different stages of the lifecycle to reduce risk, validate assumptions, and accelerate learning
• Ability to develop and execute problem-driven, outcome-focused product strategies — from defining roadmaps and success criteria to breaking work into usable chunks, managing backlogs, and supporting agile rhythms
• Knowledge of human-centered design and how it informs product direction
• Proven ability to collaborate effectively across disciplines and manage stakeholders in ways that build trust, alignment, and healthy team environments
• Ability to work successfully in a professional services environment
• Passion for creating better public outcomes through great government services
• A mindset and work approach that align with Skylight’s core values
• Ability to spend time on‑site at HHS in Washington, DC — either by being based locally or by traveling regularly for in‑person work when it’s important

Nice-to-have qualifications

• Experience delivering modernization at HHS or in other highly regulated environments
• Background with technical platforms, APIs, shared services, or enterprise infrastructure
• Exposure to security and compliance in delivery (e.g., integrating controls early, supporting compliance evidence, continuous authority to operate [ATO])
• Track record of mentoring product managers and building product practices across organizations
• Familiarity with modern cloud services (e.g., Amazon Web Services [AWS], Microsoft Azure) and delivery pipelines (CI/CD)
• Experience working effectively on hybrid or distributed teams

Don’t meet 100% of the criteria but think you can do the job? We’d love to chat anyway! We’re on a mission to build diverse teams, and studies have shown that women and marginalized folks are less likely to apply to jobs if they don’t check every box.

Other requirements

• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding