Principal Product Lead

Unissant, Inc. delivers innovative capabilities to the agencies that keep our nation healthy and safe. We apply our domain expertise, data acumen, and technology know-how to achieve breakthrough results for our clients. Working collaboratively, we advance missions and careers through a focus on honesty, integrity, and dependability. We continuously look for talent excited to join that effort. To learn more about our exciting organization, please visit us at www.unissant.com.

We are seeking a Principal Product Lead to join our team and support our government client on a large, multi-year IT services program.

The Principal Product Lead is accountable for program roadmap ownership, intake-to-prioritization governance, user and stakeholder alignment, value management, and sequencing of cross-team product work. This role will work closely with government stakeholders, program leadership, agile delivery teams, engineering, data, architecture, cybersecurity, and operations teams to ensure that product investments are aligned to mission needs, prioritized transparently, planned effectively, and delivered in measurable increments of value.

The ideal candidate is a strategic, hands-on product leader with demonstrated experience leading enterprise product management and product delivery on a large federal IT services program. They bring deep expertise in product strategy, roadmap management, stakeholder engagement, intake and prioritization, customer discovery, backlog management, agile product delivery, value measurement, and cross-functional leadership.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Own, maintain, communicate, and continuously refine the program-level product roadmap in alignment with government mission priorities, contractual objectives, user needs, technical constraints, architecture, security, data, and operational requirements.
• Establish and operate the intake-to-prioritization governance process for new requests, enhancements, mission needs, defects, technical investments, policy-driven changes, and emerging opportunities.
• Define transparent intake criteria, evaluation methods, prioritization frameworks, decision rights, and governance forums to ensure that product work is assessed consistently and aligned to mission value.
• Partner with government stakeholders, end users, program leadership, product owners, architects, engineering leads, data leads, cybersecurity leads, and operations teams to identify needs, clarify outcomes, and resolve competing priorities.
• Translate mission objectives, user needs, policy requirements, operational constraints, and stakeholder feedback into clear product strategies, roadmaps, epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, and measurable objectives.
• Lead cross-team product planning and sequencing to ensure work is delivered in a logical order that accounts for dependencies, architecture decisions, data readiness, security requirements, capacity, release schedules, and operational readiness.
• Manage and continuously refine product backlogs, ensuring that planned work is sufficiently defined, prioritized, traceable, measurable, and ready for delivery teams.
• Drive user and stakeholder alignment through discovery sessions, workshops, interviews, demonstrations, feedback reviews, roadmap discussions, and decision forums.
• Define and monitor product value measures, outcomes, adoption indicators, user satisfaction measures, operational impacts, delivery progress, and other metrics that demonstrate mission value.
• Ensure product priorities balance user needs, mission outcomes, technical feasibility, security and privacy requirements, delivery risk, cost, quality, sustainability, and contractual obligations.
• Coordinate product work across multiple teams, work streams, vendors, and stakeholder organizations; actively identify and manage product dependencies, assumptions, risks, and decision points.
• Support Program Increment Planning, release planning, backlog refinement, demonstrations, inspect-and-adapt activities, and other Agile delivery events.
• Ensure product documentation and decision artifacts support client oversight, auditability, program transition, institutional knowledge retention, and delivery-team execution.
• Communicate product strategy, roadmap changes, prioritization decisions, trade-offs, performance information, risks, and recommendations clearly to government and program leadership.
• Facilitate timely resolution of product-related escalations, scope questions, competing stakeholder priorities, and cross-team dependencies.
• Identify opportunities to improve the program's product operating model, intake processes, prioritization methods, customer engagement practices, roadmap transparency, value measurement, and delivery outcomes.
• Perform other duties as assigned in support of program priorities and client needs.

Work Experience and Job Skills

• Demonstrated experience serving as a Principal Product Lead, Product Director, Product Management Lead, Senior Product Manager, Product Owner Lead, or comparable senior product leadership role on a federal IT services program supporting 80 or more FTEs.
• Deep expertise in product strategy, product roadmaps, product discovery, customer and stakeholder engagement, intake management, prioritization, backlog management, release planning, and value measurement.
• Experience establishing and operating product intake and prioritization governance across multiple teams, work streams, vendors, or stakeholder organizations.
• Experience converting government mission needs, user needs, business objectives, policy requirements, and operational requirements into actionable product strategies, roadmaps, epics, features, and delivery backlogs.
• Demonstrated experience balancing competing priorities and making transparent, evidence-based product sequencing and prioritization recommendations.
• Experience leading stakeholder workshops, user discovery activities, requirements elicitation, product demonstrations, roadmap reviews, and decision-making forums.
• Strong understanding of Agile and SAFe product-management practices, including product ownership, Program Increment Planning, backlog refinement, user stories, acceptance criteria, release planning, and iterative delivery.
• Experience defining product outcomes and using qualitative and quantitative measures to evaluate value, adoption, user experience, operational impact, and delivery performance.
• Experience working with software engineering, cloud, cybersecurity, data, analytics, AI/ML, architecture, DevSecOps, operations, and program-management teams.
• Experience using product and agile work-management tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, Confluence, ServiceNow, Productboard, Aha!, or comparable platforms.
• Strong analytical, facilitation, problem-solving, negotiation, conflict-resolution, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to work independently in a remote environment while effectively coordinating priorities and decisions across distributed teams.
• Prior experience supporting government client programs in a comparable mission or technical domain is preferred.
• Experience supporting federal modernization, cloud migration, enterprise data, digital services, cybersecurity, systems integration, or large-scale technology transformation programs is preferred.
• Experience with human-centered design, customer experience, service design, digital transformation, analytics-informed product management, or AI-enabled product capabilities is preferred.

Education

• Bachelor's Degree is required.
• Preferred fields of study include Business Administration, Information Technology, Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, Product Management, Operations Management, Public Administration, or a related field.
• MBA or Master's Degree in a relevant field of study is preferred.

Certificates, Licenses and Registrations

• Relevant product-management, Agile, and program-management certifications are preferred.
• Preferred certifications include SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), Project Management Professional (PMP), Pragmatic Institute product certifications, Certified Product Manager, or comparable product-management, Agile, and delivery-management credentials.

Communication Skills

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to present product strategies, roadmaps, prioritization recommendations, value measures, risks, trade-offs, and delivery plans to stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Ability to communicate mission needs, user needs, product decisions, complex delivery dependencies, and product performance clearly to executive leadership, government clients, program management, delivery teams, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to write clear, concise, and well-organized product documentation, roadmaps, requirements, backlog artifacts, decision records, reports, and related content in a highly confidential manner.

Clearance Requirements

• S. citizenship or eligibility to obtain a government PIV credential is required.
• Ability to successfully complete a federal background investigation and receive a federal suitability determination is required.
• Ability to obtain and maintain required client access credentials and any applicable clearance is required.
• Ability to satisfy E-Verify employment eligibility verification requirements is required.

Travel

• This position is primarily remote.
• The client may direct or approve occasional in-person participation for planning, transition, training, meetings, workshops, or other program events.

Environmental Requirements

• Mainly a routine office environment.
• May be required to lift up to ten (10) pounds.
• Must be flexible in working extended hours when required to support program priorities, critical delivery milestones, and client needs.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the individual(s) assigned to this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and skills required. Unissant management reserves the right to modify, add, or remove duties and to assign other duties as necessary. In addition, where applicable and available, reasonable accommodation(s) may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions of this position.

Please note: Candidate(s) will be required to go through pre-employment screening.

Unissant, Inc. is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer! (EOE; M/F/Disability/Vets)