Staff/Principal Engagement Manager

About the role

At Skylight, engagement managers are responsible for driving the overall success of our client work. They draw on their expertise in areas such as product management practices, agile coaching at the organizational and team levels,, risk/issue management, stakeholder management, continual improvement, and contract administration in order to deliver the highest levels of client service and work. You'll join a contract supporting a federal agency in the health and civilian space. The systems involved handle sensitive personal data that millions of people rely on, so getting them right means treating that data with care while keeping the experience clear and humane. You'll own the product strategy and roadmap for the work, and you'll also serve as the engagement manager - accountable for the overall success of the contract, the health of the team, and the relationship with our client. This is a technical product role: you'll work closely with engineers on architecture, integrations, and the secure data exchanges, and you'll be comfortable making informed tradeoffs about technical feasibility, sequencing, and risk. You'll set direction in partnership with the agency, assemble and support a multidisciplinary team, navigate the privacy and security realities of working with federal information, and keep delivery moving against federal milestones. This is a senior leadership role for someone who can hold the "what to build and why," the "how it's built," and the "how this engagement succeeds" in the same hand.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross-functional team of researchers, designers, and engineers 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
• Own the overall success of the engagement as the engagement manager - managing scope, risk, contract health, and the relationship the client
• Partner closely with engineers on architecture, integrations, and the secure data exchanges, making informed tradeoffs about technical feasibility, sequencing, and risk
• Build and support a healthy, psychologically safe team, and coach individuals through the ambiguity and complexity that come with government work
• Creatively navigate bureaucratic and compliance challenges - including the privacy and security realities of federal tax information - to keep delivery moving

Requirements

• Understand lean product principles and how to apply them across the product life cycle to mitigate risk, validate assumptions, and amplify learning
• Can develop a product strategy informed by the problem to be solved, prioritizing outcomes over feature sets, and establish the direction of the product over time
• Ability to execute a product strategy by breaking scope into usable chunks of value, maintaining a prioritized backlog of validated user stories, and facilitating team ceremonies
• Ability to manage clients and stakeholders in a way that builds trust, alignment, and healthy environments for individuals and teams
• Ability to lead and grow an engagement as an engagement manager - including agile program management, contract health, risk and issue management, and team health
• Technical fluency sufficient to partner with engineers on architecture, APIs and integrations, and security and compliance tradeoffs, and to translate between technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience setting direction and standards across multiple workstreams or teams, and coaching other practitioners (principal level)
• Ability to work successfully within a professional services environment (e.g., can communicate effectively with clients)
• Passionate about creating better public outcomes through great government services
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values
• Ability to travel for work from time to time
• Nice-to-have qualifications
• Experience leading product work on services that handle sensitive personal data (e.g., tax, financial, or benefits information)
• Hands-on or prior engineering background, or experience as a technical product manager working closely with engineering teams
• Experience growing engagements through business development on a professional services or consulting team
• Prior experience working in the civic tech space
• Experience working in a remote-team environment
• Don't meet every qualification but think you can do the job? We'd still love to hear from yo

Benefits

Additional Information

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.

Your Match

How well this role fits your profile.

Company Intel

What employees say

Worked at skylighthq? Share your experience