Public Strategies Overview

Public Strategies is a dynamic professional services firm with more than 35 years of experience delivering innovative communications, consulting, technology, events, and project management solutions. Our collaborative team of problem solvers, creatives, technologists, trainers, communicators, and change agents is committed to doing good well.

Serving private sector, government, and nonprofit clients nationwide, Public Strategies delivers award-winning products and experiences. Public Strategies has also pioneered nationally respected human services programs supporting low-income and other vulnerable populations. Through our integrated initiatives (including One Set Studio, our cutting-edge virtual production space, and NextThought, our e-learning initiative) we elevate storytelling, training, videos, and immersive experiences for leading national brands.

Position Summary

The Product Manager is responsible for guiding Public Strategies’ strategy related to technology solutions, with an understanding of the important links between client needs, programmatic and content drivers, and technology infrastructure. This role develops and communicates the product vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned with organizational objectives and leadership priorities. Operating as the primary Product Manager, this individual ensures the right features are built by gathering high-level requirements from subject-matter experts (SMEs),aligning product deliverables with contract budgets and commitments, and ensuring maximum efficiency by identifying opportunities to standardize features and assets across contracts to maximize reuse and reduce redundant development.

While a high-level individual contributor, this role is designed to work closely with multiple leaders to provide workflow guidance, including contract leads and SMEs, technology, content development, and data structure and visualization teams. Upon business demand, the Manager may supervise a small team of Product Specialists who assist in executing product management functions.

Key Responsibilities

• Roadmap & Strategy: Owns the product roadmap and priorities for major feature releases spanning multiple clients and contracts. Balances customer value with business needs to deliver products that are competitive, scalable, and pivotal to the workflows of internal and external users.
• Product Discovery: Collaborates with Product Development to conduct discovery efforts to identify user problems, opportunities, and improvements through stakeholder interviews, data analysis, and workflow observation. Validates proposed solutions meet priority client needs before development through prototypes, testing, or stakeholder feedback.
• Requirements & Validation: Defines clear, high-level requirements for features and pages, taking into account user workflow needs, content and structure, and data inputs/outputs. Holds final authority for User Acceptance Testing (UAT), either executing it directly or coordinating with relevant SMEs and stakeholders to accept or reject features prior to deployment.
• Capacity Prioritization: Prioritizes the feature pipeline for 80% of the Product Development team's capacity, while respecting the 20% capacity owned by Product Development for infrastructure, maintenance, and bug fixes.
• Cross-Functional Matrix Management & Team Leadership: Drives cross-functional collaboration and builds alignment to navigate trade-offs across teams. Partners with the Product Development team to negotiate achievable due dates. Maintains clear product documentation, including feature requirements, acceptance criteria, roadmap updates and communicates to the appropriate teams the impact of and timing of releases.

Education/Training

• Bachelors Degree and 7+ years of relevant experience or documented expertise in a relevant field.
• Applicable fields and disciplines include technology, adult education and training, business, social sciences, humanities, public administration, public policy, education, not-for-profit management, and related fields.

Experience

• Working with program and technology teams to advance produce management objectives
• Working with and/or on behalf of populations served by PSI to include but not limited to; low-income new parents, financially and otherwise vulnerable families, non-custodial fathers, TANF and SNAP recipients, veterans, the historically unemployed or underemployed, individuals with a criminal background including those re-entering society from incarceration, incumbent workers, low skilled or wage workers, and the long term unemployed

Skills, Knowledge, and Core Competencies

Ownership & Accountability

• Takes full responsibility for outcomes, not just tasks.
• Makes decisions confidently and follows through.

 Value & SME-Centric Mindset

• Deeply understands PS’ business, business needs, and contract goals.
• Engages continuously with SMEs to ensure features solve the right problems and meet high-level client requirements.

Product Planning & Execution

• Strong roadmap development and prioritization skills.
• Understands product lifecycle and agile methodologies.

Strategic Thinking

• Connects product decisions to organizational goals and long-term platform evolution.
• Identifies opportunities for scalable solutions that benefit multiple contracts and programs.

Communication & Influence

• Strong communication, strategic thinking, problem-solving, and stakeholder management are essential.
• Able to present vision, decisions, and data to stakeholders.
• Influences without formal authority over development resources, while possessing the capability to manage direct reports (e.g., Product Specialists) as the team expands.

Problem-Solving & Critical Thinking

• Breaks down complex problems into actionable steps.
• Anticipates risks and removes obstacles.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and change.

 Technical Fluency

• Understands how digital products are built.
• Can discuss technical constraints with product development.
• Bridges the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Essential Physical Requirements

Sufficient mobility and strength to move about the facility. Ability to be mobile throughout the community.