Staff Product Manager, DevOps (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 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. As a DevOps-focused technical product manager, you’ll work closely with engineering and DevOps teams to streamline operations, reduce delivery friction, and enable scalable, secure software delivery.

What you’ll do

• Lead a cross-functional team of researchers, designers, engineers, and subject matter experts to build and ship high-impact products and services
• Translate needs from users and government partners into a product strategy, including vision, objectives, measures of success, product roadmap, and product backlog
• Manage the direction, scope, and priorities of the product initiative, building from user research to minimum viable products to scalable solutions
• Write user stories, prioritize stories, and build release plans
• Facilitate team ceremonies such as planning meetings, stakeholder syncs, and retrospectives
• Draw on data and feedback to inform the product strategy and roadmap
• Work in close partnership with government teams to transfer digital skills and product knowledge throughout the course of the project
• Creatively navigate bureaucratic challenges, paving the way for more intuitive processes in the future
• Collaborate with government partners to ensure compatibility with existing processes and technologies

What we're looking for

Minimum qualifications

• Experience leading cloud infrastructure or on-premise infrastructure project
• Enough understanding of modern DevOps practices to meaningfully engage with and lead DevOps teams and help prioritize technical decisions and architecture
• Ability to take feedback from clients and translate it into priorities for the team to address
• Understanding of 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
• Ability to develop a product strategy informed by an understanding of the problem to be solved, prioritize outcomes over feature sets, and establish the direction of the product over time (e.g., product roadmap), including success criteria
• Ability to execute the product strategy by breaking down the product’s scope into usable chunks of value that can be realized sooner rather than later, create and maintain a prioritized backlog with validated user stories, and facilitate team ceremonies 
• Understanding of how to engage in the process of human-centered design in order to better inform product direction
• Ability to collaborate with team members and partners outside of your discipline, such as researchers, designers, engineers, and others
• Ability to manage clients and stakeholders in a way that builds trust, alignment, and a healthy environment for individuals and teams
• Understanding of the merits of different software development methodologies (e.g., agile, lean) and how to put them into practice
• Ability to work successfully within a professional services environment (e.g., can communicate effectively with clients)
• Passion for creating better public outcomes through great government services
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values
• Ability to travel for work from time to time

Nice-to-have qualifications

• Experience with Kubernetes and other orchestration management tooling
• Proficiency in containerization technologies such as Docker
• Background in modernization projects such as server upgrades, database migrations, or cloud transitions
• Familiarity with GitHub-based CI/CD pipelines and automation workflows
• Exposure to vulnerability management and handling of end-of-life (EOL) tooling
• Experience working in FISMA High or Medium environments and navigating government security compliance (e.g., ATO/ATD processes, Privacy Impact Ass