Senior/Staff Product Manager (NARA)

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.

In this role, you’ll support the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as they modernize how critical government records are securely transferred, stored, and accessed. This work is essential to preserving and providing secure access to historical records, supporting NARA’s vital mission for generations to come.

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 initiatives, building from user research to full implementation
• 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

• 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
• 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, creating and maintaining a prioritized backlog with validated user stories, and facilitating team ceremonies over the course of the product’s iterations
• 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
• Ability to work successfully within a professional services environment (e.g., can communicate effectively with clients)
• Passionate about 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 working with government agencies, particularly on records management or cloud modernization projects
• Familiarity with cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure or AWS
• Prior experience working in the civic tech space
• Experience working in a remote-team environment

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

• Ability to obtain and hold a federal public trust (Tier 2).
• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territorie