Senior/Staff Technical Product Manager (CDC)

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. A technical product manager specializes in products with significant technical depth — platforms, APIs, data systems, or modernization efforts — where product decisions depend on fluency with the underlying architecture and engineering tradeoffs.

We work with a team at CDC that builds and maintains an integrated disease surveillance system used by state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) health departments across the country. It gives jurisdictions case management for a wide range of conditions, and a secure path for moving epidemiologic, laboratory, and clinical data to CDC. Our role is to modernize it — a cloud-based platform designed to improve scalability, security, and adaptability to evolving public health needs.

You’ll own a full stack feature team that supports data migration, case investigation, or epidemiological reporting of clinical health data. This is a role where your prioritization calls turn on architecture and engineering tradeoffs as often as they turn on user needs.

What to know going in

The work runs on two tracks at once: building out the modernized, cloud-based platform and getting jurisdictions to adopt it, while the long-standing legacy version stays in production for the states that depend on it. The work is split across several feature teams plus a contract leadership group, so you’ll be one of a few product managers coordinating across a large, open-source system deployed in several hosting configurations. Expect real technical depth and real bureaucratic complexity, often in the same afternoon.

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

• Own the backlog and roadmap for a feature team, deciding what to build next based on the technical landscape, CDC’s priorities, and what jurisdictions need from their data
• 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
• Write and prioritize user stories, build release plans, and facilitate team ceremonies such as planning meetings, stakeholder syncs, and retrospectives
• Partner with CDC and state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) stakeholders to manage velocity and prioritization, and to transfer product skills and knowledge to government teams over the course of the project
• Creatively navigate bureaucratic challenges and keep the work compatible with existing processes and technologies, paving the way for more intuitive processes in the future

What we’re looking for

Basic qualifications

• Technical fluency with software-based products — enough comfort with architecture, APIs, and data systems to make prioritization calls that hinge on engineering tradeoffs
• 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 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 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

• Prior hands-on engineering experience
• Experience modernizing legacy systems or migrating them from on-prem infrastructure to the cloud
• Familiarity with healthcare or public health data, or prior experience in a public health setting
• Experience working alongside other product managers on large, multi-team efforts
• 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.
• As a government contractor, you may be required to obtain a public trust or security 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 may require occasional or regular travel based on company, client, or contract needs.

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 Technical Product Manager at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

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

These ranges apply if the contract is awarded. Compensation begins on your first day of work.

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.