Senior/Staff Product Manager (U.S. Air Force)

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 has partnered with the U.S. Air Force across multiple legacy modernization efforts. The work spans modernization of legacy systems, new capability development in multi-vendor environments, iteration on established platforms, all inside an agile transformation and broader organizational change.

You'll own product direction for these efforts in a player-coach model, working alongside government partners on delivery, stakeholder management, and the coaching that builds durable internal capability.

What to know going in

Your first 30 days are about working with the Skylight team and government personnel, learning the client’s domain and organization, and enabling your government partners. Access to users varies from team to team, so part of the job is finding and creating the paths to them. The client is early- to mid-transformation, so expect organizational and operational change along the way.

This role is contingent on Skylight being awarded the underlying contract. If we’re not awarded the contract, we’ll let you know promptly and discuss whether there are other opportunities that fit.

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 requirements, product strategy, including vision, objectives, measures of success, product roadmap, and product backlog
• Manage the direction, scope, and priorities of net-new capabilities, building from user research to minimum viable products to scalable solutions
• Write user stories, prioritize stories, and build release plans
• Build trust with government stakeholders and partner vendors, and keep plans aligned as priorities shift through organizational change
• Coach government partners in product and customer-centric practices, transferring skills so the work outlasts the engagement

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
• 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
• Experience in a consulting or client-facing role, driving product strategy and measurable outcomes with government or enterprise stakeholders
• Experience working on cross-functional teams (product, design, engineering, ops) in iterative delivery
• Ability to coach and enable government partners on agile software development principles
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values
• Nice-to-haves
• Experience with legacy modernization and/or enterprise digital transformation efforts
• Hands-on experience managing a backlog in Jira or similar tools
• A background in user research or customer experience
• Military or Department of Defense experience
• 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 do the job? We’d still love to hear from you. If you’re excited about the role, apply. We consider candidates with a range of backgrounds and experiences.
• Other requirements
• Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.
• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories.
• This contract requires U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment.
• This role doesn’t require a security clearance, but you must be able to obtain a Common Access Card (CAC), which includes a government background check.
• You must complete a company background check successfully.

Logistics

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a fully remote position.

Travel

You may travel to Air Force bases across the U.S., quarterly at most.

Care package