Senior/Staff Product Manager, Technical (ACF)

Description

The company is a digital consultancy that uses design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services.

It is part of a wider push to change how every level of government serves families, patients, and others in a digital world. The team is growing and made up of public interest technologists.

Product managers own strategy, planning, execution, stakeholder management, and team health. They work with researchers, designers, engineers, and client stakeholders to shape product decisions and decide what gets built next and why.

A technical product manager focuses on products with deep technical content, such as platforms, APIs, data systems, or modernization work, where decisions depend on understanding the architecture and engineering tradeoffs.

The role supports the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) as it expands surge support and capacity for its new Data Capacity and Digital Services organization in the Office of Administration, through the option year of Task Order 1. The group works with enterprise-serving teams such as ACF Tech and the Office of Grants Management on ACF priorities: cutting grantee burden, reducing waste, fraud, and abuse, and modernizing legacy systems.

You will lead product work covering quick surge requests and larger modernization efforts, working directly with ACF staff to decide what is worth building and why. Much of it runs on platforms such as Palantir Foundry, Databricks, and enterprise AI tools, so you need enough technical fluency to weigh architecture and data tradeoffs with your engineers.

The role is consultative. You will meet senior leaders directly, and much of the work is not scoped in advance. It is not a job of ranking an existing backlog. You need a working grasp of service design and the ability to engage with AI-focused delivery teams, including data scientists, Foundry engineers, designers, and others. Alongside delivery, the company does technical consulting and capacity building, and people who take initiative and are comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity tend to do best.

The interview process has four conversations over about two to three weeks: a preliminary screen, a skills interview, a behavioral interview, and a reverse interview with your potential team.

If you do not meet every qualification but think you can do the job, you are still encouraged to apply. The company considers candidates from a range of backgrounds and experiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross-functional team of researchers, designers, engineers, and subject matter experts in building and shipping high-impact products and services.
• Turn loosely defined, unscoped problems into a clear product strategy covering vision, objectives, success measures, roadmap, and backlog.
• Convert policy and program requirements from ACF leadership into technical solutions the team can deliver, and update plans as priorities change.
• Write and rank user stories, build release plans, and run team ceremonies such as planning, stakeholder syncs, and retrospectives.
• Partner closely with government teams, helping them build digital skills and product knowledge over the life of the project.
• Find a way through bureaucratic obstacles, clearing the path for more intuitive processes later.

Requirements

• Basic qualifications
• Build a product strategy rooted in the problem, putting outcomes ahead of features, with a roadmap and clear success criteria.
• Use lean and agile methods, such as minimum viable products, to test assumptions early, split scope into small slices of value, keep a ranked backlog of validated user stories, and run ceremonies across product, design, engineering, and operations.
• Have hands-on experience with service design methods such as journey mapping, service blueprinting, and contextual inquiry to find pain points, manual workarounds, and chances to automate or streamline.
• Have hands-on experience delivering AI-enabled products or workflows, and judge when AI (such as LLMs, agents, or intelligent document processing) adds value versus when simpler automation or process change is the better fix.
• Understand how data flows through an organization and spot fragmented or duplicated data, working with engineers to design more connected, reliable systems.
• Have the technical fluency to reason about system architecture, APIs, data modeling, security, and engineering tradeoffs with engineers, and make product decisions that depend on them.
• Manage clients and stakeholders in ways that build trust and alignment and create healthy environments for individuals and teams.
• Have a record of defining and measuring impact, such as time saved, shorter processing times, fewer errors, or higher adoption.
• Bring a mindset and work approach that fits the company's core values.
• Nice-to-haves
• Hands-on experience with one or more of Credal, Palantir Foundry, Databricks, or Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse).
• Experience applying responsible AI practices, such as evaluating model outputs, designing human-in-the-loop review, and knowing frameworks like the NIST AI Risk Management Framework or federal AI guidance.
• Familiarity with federal security and compliance processes, such as FedRAMP and Authority to Operate (ATO), and how they affect which tools can be adopted.
• An engineering or data background, or experience taking a product from zero to one at a startup or elsewhere under uncertainty.
• Experience turning policy into technical solutions and implementing it in software.
• Experience modernizing legacy systems, including moving data and workflows off spreadsheets, paper, or aging case management tools.
• Experience delivering AI-forward technology in government, highly regulated industries, or other public-benefit settings.
• A record of staying aligned and accountable on remote teams.

Conditions

Fully remote position.

Travel of one to two times a year, based on client or contract needs.

Full-time, exempt position.

All work must be performed 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.

An existing clearance is not required to apply, but as a government contractor, anyone hired must be able to obtain a Tier 2 public trust background investigation.

Some roles sit on federal contracts where additional years of experience can substitute for a degree.

Pay is set by your interview results and current seniority. Current base salary ranges for product managers are:

Associate Product Manager: $90,000 to $125,000

Product Manager I: $120,000 to $140,000

Product Manager II: $135,000 to $160,000

Senior Product Manager: $150,000 to $185,000

Staff Product Manager: $170,000 to $203,000

Principal Product Manager: $180,000 to $230,000

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance.
• Life and AD&D insurance.
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, and health savings account.
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of salary, with no vesting period.
• Flexible paid time off, generally about 25 days a year, plus 11 paid federal holidays.
• Up to 12 weeks of paid time off for eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents.
• Performance rewards: annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options.
• Business development and sales bonuses.
• Referral bonuses.
• An annual $2,000 allowance for professional development.
• An annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases.
• An annual $100 swag budget for company merchandise such as hoodies and hats.
• A flexible, remote-friendly way of working.