Product Manager

State Affairs•Washington, DC

4h•Onsite

About The Position

State Affairs is the nation’s leading news and policy intelligence platform focused on state governments. We combine nonpartisan coverage of Statehouses across the country alongside state government data and AI-native tools into a singular platform. We inform and empower decision makers, policy professionals and citizens through our award-winning journalism and data – delivering profound insights to help our customers decode and act on state politics and policy. We’re building a category-defining business that will reshape America as we strengthen visibility into what’s happening and why at the state level. We are hiring a Product Manager to join our team located in Washington, DC to own a critical surface of our platform. You will not just be shipping features — you will be shaping how practitioners, organizations, and decision-makers consume intelligence, act on information, and demonstrate impact. Your work will sit at the intersection of user workflow, data integrity, and organizational scale. You will move fluidly between deep customer problems and architectural tradeoffs, between the needs of a daily power user and the expectations of an executive buyer.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in relevant field
3+ years of professional work experience in product management, owning a product roadmap from discovery through launch
Prior professional work experience in an Agile/Scrum environment, collaborating daily with engineering and design to ship software iteratively
Prior professional work experience balancing the conflicting needs of multiple user personas — from the executive buyer to the daily operator — within a single product surface
Prior professional work experience conducting user interviews, synthesizing qualitative signals, and validating assumptions with high-value customers
Ability to map complex workflows, identify organizational bottlenecks, and design extensible solutions rather than one-off fixes
Ability to define KPIs, analyze engagement data, and use quantitative evidence to defend prioritization decisions
Ability to discuss data pipelines, schema design, and API architecture with engineers — not as a coder, but as an informed partner
Ability to write and communicate verbally. Ability to write a tight spec, translate complex requirements into clear user stories, and align a room without authority

Nice To Haves

Prior professional work experience with AI/ML in a product context
Prior professional work experience in a 0→1 or startup environment
Knowledge of civic tech, govtech, enterprise SaaS, or legal tech

Responsibilities

Workflow Depth & Operational Rhythm: Design for professionals who live in the details. You will build tools that support high-intensity, always-on use cases — understanding the distinct motivations of different user personas and translating that into product logic that serves both the individual practitioner and the teams they operate within.
Signal-to-Noise & Intelligent Surfacing: Develop product logic that prioritizes relevance over volume. You will work closely with data and engineering teams to ensure our platform surfaces the right information at the right time — transforming raw inputs into structured, actionable insights users can act on with confidence.
Organizational Scale & Ecosystem Fit: Design for the complexity of how large teams consume and share information across hierarchies. You will think carefully about permissions, governance, and interoperability — ensuring our platform integrates cleanly into the broader software stacks our customers already depend on.
Data as a Product: Treat the lifecycle of information — from ingestion to enrichment to consumption — as a product problem, not a backend concern. You will partner with data and engineering teams to maintain accuracy, timeliness, and structural integrity as the foundation everything else is built on.
Holistic Value Delivery: Shift the frame from individual user actions to organizational ROI. You will identify features that help entire teams demonstrate their value internally — and build the metrics and narratives that make that case visible.