Staff Product Manager - 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.

Skylight supports HHS’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) across a growing portfolio of high-visibility work. New projects arrive quickly and often without clear scope. Our product team covers three areas:

• OCIO portfolio. Taking in and shaping new projects for OCIO.
• ATO/GRC tool replacement. Supporting modernization efforts for Authority to Operate and governance, risk, and compliance processes, on an aggressive timeline that involves many federal stakeholders.
• CTIR Intelligence Data Hub. A greenfield effort for HHS’s Cybersecurity and Resilience team (CTIR). It will consolidate threat intelligence sources such as ThreatConnect, Intel 471, Feedly, Google Threat Intelligence, and Splunk into a single, FedRAMP High–compliant workbench for analysts and leadership.

Across all three, client leadership believes moving too slowly is a bigger risk than being wrong.

As the lead product manager, you’ll be the team’s front door with OCIO and lead a small team of product managers, while likely owning a workstream of your own.

What to know going in

This is a player/coach role. You’ll report directly to Skylight’s contract leadership and work on the front lines with HHS and Skylight leadership.

The work is high-visibility, and priorities shift often. You’ll need to absorb new work quickly, learn enough to act, and come back with a plan, without waiting months to learn everything first. Sometimes you’ll push back with the client, and sometimes you’ll disagree and commit. Knowing the difference is crucial. You’ll do well here if you like showing early, imperfect work and iterating on it.

In this role, you’ll also serve as a people manager. As a manager, you’ll keep growing in your craft and contributing to client work, while also taking on responsibility for the people you manage — their development, their performance, and the conditions that help them do their best work.

What you’ll do

• Take in new requests from OCIO, find the real need behind each one, and shape it into scoped, prioritized work
• Build the lightweight scaffolding (intake, planning, and team rhythms) that lets the team move fast without adding overhead
• Own a product workstream of your own, translating user and stakeholder needs into a vision, roadmap, and prioritized backlog
• Partner with HHS and Skylight leadership as priorities shift, knowing when to push back and when to disagree and commit
• Build strong working relationships with the people you manage and actively support their development
• Coach individuals through growth, feedback, and day-to-day challenges

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 directly managing product managers, and a track record of standing up team systems and agile practices that stay lightweight and change as needs change
• Strong client-facing consulting experience, including taking in ambiguous requests and turning them into scoped work
• 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

• Jira and Atlassian administration or configuration experience
• Experience on federal contracts or in a consulting setting serving a CIO organization
• 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.
• You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship.
• You must be able to obtain and maintain a public trust clearance.
• 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

This role is remote, but occasional travel to DC may come up.

Expected start date

As soon as possible

Care package

Salary

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Product Manager at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

• Associate Product Manager: $90,000–$125,000
• Product Manager I: $120,000–$140,000
• Product Manager II: $135,000–$160,000
• Senior Product Manager: $150,000–$185,000
• Staff Product Manager: $170,000–$203,000
• Principal Product Manager: $180,000–$230,000

Benefits

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways:

• Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
• Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays
• Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents
• Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options
• Business development / sales bonuses
• Referral bonuses
• Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development
• Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases
• Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)
• Flexible, remote-friendly work environment
• An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good

Interview tips

Our process includes a preliminary screen, a skills interview, a behavioral interview, and a reverse interview where you meet your potential team — usually four conversations across two to three weeks. Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview:

• Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works.
• Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them.
• Browse our case studies to learn more about our work.

If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at recruiting@skylight.digital.

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.