Lead Technical Product Service Manager (CDC)

Skylight

2d•$90,000 - $230,000•Remote

About The Position

At Skylight, technical product service managers are responsible for managing services and products to create an integrated, positive user experience. They’re responsible for the delivery of effective services for users, and they use what they learn from that delivery to continually refine software and infrastructure products. Product service managers are skilled at defining strategy, planning, execution, stakeholder management, and team health, and they partner with product managers, researchers, designers, engineers, client stakeholders, and others to inform their decisions. At a high level, it’s the product manager’s job to work with stakeholders, users, and technical teams to make sure we build what users need — and then to make sure what we build gets used. A technical product manager specializes in services and products with significant technical depth — complex implementations, platforms, APIs, data systems, or modernization efforts — where service and 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 be the contract lead for platform adoption, accountable for supporting at least three public health jurisdictions per year as they migrate from the legacy system to the modernized platform. That means building relationships with jurisdiction stakeholders to understand their migration opportunities and constraints, owning the migration service and product roadmap, coordinating work across several delivery teams, and building the software and infrastructure that makes migration possible. You’ll also hold the CDC relationship that makes effective migrations possible, and utilize migration and adoption learnings to help inform the roadmap for the modernized system. Migration is at least as much change management as it is engineering. A jurisdiction moving off the legacy system is moving the system its disease investigators use every day, so the work is equal parts roadmap, readiness, and earning trust — often with people who have good reasons to be cautious. You’ll do that while the legacy version stays in production for the states that still depend on it, and while other feature teams build out the modernized platform alongside you. 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.

Requirements

Comfort with public health as a domain — enough grounding to understand what case surveillance and investigation work demands of a system
Experience managing and delivering services or products within the public health domain
Experience in people management, including providing mentorship, coaching, and career development support to team members
Experience leading legacy modernization or system migration work, including the change management that comes with moving people off an old system
Understand how to engage in the process of human-centered design in order to better inform product direction
Familiarity and comfort with working with DevSecOps engineers to modify infrastructure and support on-prem to cloud deployments
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

Hands-on experience with an integrated disease surveillance system, whether as a user or in a delivery role
Experience working with complicated deployment infrastructure or supporting an on-prem to cloud migration
Past employment at a state, tribal, local, or territorial health department
Experience coordinating across multiple delivery teams working toward one shared outcome
Experience delivering technology in government, regulated industries, or other public-benefit settings
A track record of staying aligned and accountable on remote teams

Responsibilities

Own the integrated service and product roadmap for migrating at least three STLTs per year onto the modernized platform — identifying opportunities, sequencing the work, defining what readiness looks like, and turning what jurisdictions need into a plan they can follow
Lead multiple project teams across devops, content design, and full-stack engineering as they build the migration materials, tooling, and documentation that jurisdictions depend on
Partner with CDC stakeholders who liaise directly with state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) health departments to keep migration priorities, timelines, and expectations aligned
Facilitate team ceremonies and stakeholder syncs, and draw on data and feedback from migrating jurisdictions to adjust the plan
Set the direction for the team’s work in partnership with the agency, and align the team around what success looks like
Coach the team through the ambiguity and complexity that come with government work

Benefits

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