Product Manager II (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 is partnering with a U.S. Air Force program office that runs a portfolio of civil engineering systems. These systems serve users across civil engineering, security forces, and services, including readiness managers, range personnel, and fire and emergency services. Releases are slow today. Regression testing is manual, security review happens after development finishes, and code freeze to production can take a month or more. We’ll move the program to an outcome-driven model with test automation and security built into the pipeline, starting with migrating the first application onto a DoD software factory. Leadership wants this office to become the model other Air Force offices adopt.

In this role, you’ll keep the team’s delivery organized and moving, working hand in hand with the engagement manager on deliverables and documentation and owning the backlog as the program changes how it works.

What to know going in

This is an execution-focused product role, well suited to someone with a strong project management or operations instinct. Your first 30 days are about getting to know the Skylight team and government personnel, learning how work gets tracked and delivered today, and helping move the team’s backlog and documentation from Jira and Confluence to GitLab and Mattermost. Expect to work alongside government staff and other contractors, with tools and processes changing as the work gets underway.

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

• Partner with the engagement manager to organize deliverables, documentation, and schedules so the work stays on track and visible to government partners

• Maintain a prioritized backlog: write user stories, keep priorities current, and build release plans with the team

• Lead the team’s move from Jira and Confluence to GitLab and Mattermost, keeping configuration, tracking, and documentation clean through the transition

• Facilitate team ceremonies such as planning meetings, stakeholder syncs, and retrospectives

• Translate needs from users and government partners into product objectives, measures of success, and roadmap items

• Work in close partnership with government teams to transfer digital skills and product knowledge throughout the project

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

• Strong organizational skills, with experience keeping deliverables, documentation, and action items on track for an agile software delivery team

• 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

• Project management experience, such as running schedules, risks, and dependencies for a delivery…