Senior/Staff Product Manager (CMS)

 

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 are responsible for strategy, planning, execution, stakeholder management, and team health. Product managers partner with researchers, designers, engineers, client stakeholders, and others to inform their product decisions. At a high level, it’s the product manager’s job to figure out what to build next and why.

Skylight is supporting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in providing technical assistance to states as they meet new Medicaid community engagement requirements. States must implement and comply with the new requirements under H.R. 1 by January 1, 2027.

On this engagement, you’ll help states get there ahead of that deadline. This isn’t traditional digital-product management — your day-to-day is coordinating across many stakeholders, leading discovery, gathering requirements, and scoping work so it fits each state’s needs and constraints. You’ll operate as a self-starter in an ambiguous, fast-moving space: setting priorities, rolling up your sleeves, and driving real outcomes and deliverables rather than waiting for a defined backlog. Throughout, you’ll keep CMS and state partners aligned on what matters most and what comes next.

What to know going in

You’ll be helping states get compliant rather than shipping a single product of your own. The work is tied to a hard compliance deadline, so priorities can shift quickly, and the space is genuinely ambiguous. It’s a strong fit for someone who’s comfortable defining the path as they go and working across organizational lines to make things happen.

What you’ll do

• Coordinate across CMS and multiple state stakeholders to align on goals, constraints, and what each state needs to reach compliance
• Lead discovery, requirements gathering, and scoping in an ambiguous space, turning unclear starting points into prioritized, actionable plans
• Translate needs from users and government partners into a strategy, including vision, objectives, and measures of success
• Facilitate team ceremonies such as planning meetings, stakeholder syncs, and retrospectives
• Work in close partnership with federal and state government teams to transfer digital skills and product knowledge over the course of the project
• Creatively navigate bureaucratic challenges, paving the way for more intuitive processes in the future

What we’re looking for

Basic qualifications

• Understand lean product principles and how to apply them (e.g., minimum viable product) at various stages of the product life cycle in order to mitigate risk, validate assumptions, and amplify learning
• Can develop a product strategy that is informed by an understanding of the problem to be solved, prioritizes outcomes over feature sets, and establishes the direction of the product over time (e.g., product roadmap), including success criteria
• Understand how to engage in the process of human-centered design in order to better inform product direction
• Ability to collaborate with folks outside of your discipline, such as researchers, designers, engineers, and others, in order to get things done
• Ability to manage clients and stakeholders in a way that builds trust, alignment, and healthy environments for individuals and teams
• Understand the merits of different software development methodologies (e.g., agile, lean) and how to put them into practice
• Experience coordinating across multiple stakeholders and leading discovery, requirements gathering, and scoping — especially in ambiguous or fast-changing environments
• Experience working on cross-functional teams (product, design, engineering, ops) in iterative delivery
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with Medicaid, state eligibility systems, or other public benefits programs
• Experience delivering technology in government, regulated industries, or other public-benefit settings
• A track record of staying aligned and accountable on remote teams

Don’t meet every qualification but think you can d