Product Manager

Overview

• The Product Manager will lead the delivery of high-quality products and systems that improve the availability and use of public health data to inform decision making. This role is aligned to the Workforce Acceleration Initiative (WAI). WAI is a federally funded CDC Foundation program with the goal of helping the nation’s public health agencies by providing them with the technology and data experts they need to accelerate their information system improvements. This position will work with public health professionals within the Vermont Department of Health (VDH) and IT leaders from the Vermont Agency of Digital Services (ADS) to develop and maintain systems critical to the work of protecting and improving the health of Vermonters. This includes a diverse range of systems that address business needs ranging from updating Vermont’s Immunization Registry to better support exchange of data with other jurisdictions to transitioning many small niche data systems and MS Access databases to modern platforms in preparation for sharing via a cross-department data warehouse.  This role is best for someone who is mission driven and is comfortable bringing a product mindset to organizations who may be unfamiliar with this approach. The Product Manager will be hired by the CDC Foundation and assigned to the Vermont Department of Health (VDH), with work performed under the supervision of the Vermont Agency of Digital Services Lead assigned to the VDH.  This position is eligible for a fully remote work arrangement for U.S. based candidates.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with public health agency programs and technical teams to develop and deliver high-quality, user-friendly technologies that improve access to data for decision making.
• Work to understand public health agency needs and processes. Collaborate with the public health agency technical team to create a shared vision for how to best prioritize and address the most critical challenges.
• Produce and maintain documentation to communicate the shared vision and guide development strategy including context diagrams and logical data models.
• Develop, maintain and facilitate prioritization of the product backlog in alignment with the product Vision
• Oversee the delivery of technical solutions from concept to release, while ensuring smooth operations and continuous product improvement.
• Create and maintain feature level requirements documents including use cases, business rules, data element specifications and report specifications.
• Test products and new features to confirm alignment with documented requirements and usability, and identify bugs.
• Contribute to product strategy and success metrics, which may include Key Performance Indicator (KPI) models and analytics.
• Collaborate in the creation of product development and management documents, including roadmaps, project briefs and user stories.
• Be strategic and tactical to help define the product strategy.
• Build solid relationships with partners to understand users' needs, program goals, and the program's policies and operational constraints so that you can develop products that are valuable, usable and feasible.
• Provide product management advice and guidance to the public health agency and the CDC Foundation to share expertise and build capacity.

Qualifications

• Required Qualifications
• Bachelor’s degree required.
• Minimum of 8 years of experience as a Product Owner or Product Manager for the development of IT systems.
• Experience developing products using Agile methodologies, particularly in the role of Product Owner
• Experience developing a product vision and strategy and have led multi-disciplinary teams to achieve that vision from concept to launch.
• Experience collaborating with a multi-disciplinary team to translate the product vision and lead the team through smooth and continuous delivery.
• Experience working on a mature product balancing the need to address technical debt with new product enhancements through continuous iterations.
• Knowledge and experience with project management methodologies, principles and processes.
• Experience and an understanding of product objectives, goal and metrics to oversee the development and implementation of both small and large-scale projects.
• Experienced in change management and risk management principles and processes to provide leadership in the development of strategic plans and change management initiatives and their roll-out.
• Experience using data to make decisions, gathering data insights by design to improve product outcomes.
• Demonstrated experience developing and maintaining working relationships with internal and external partners and can effectively promote collaboration among differing viewpoints.
• Experience providing guidance in the areas of digital systems/products, data sources and the collection and context of data.
• Strong understanding of technical concepts and legacy systems.
• Capability to embed privacy and security into product delivery processes and design.
• Knowledge of user experience design and user research principles and concepts.
• Ability to communicate and articulate problems and resolutions to designers.
• Ability to translate user or data insights into actionable design comments and critiques.
• Outstanding interpersonal and teamwork skills; and the ability to develop productive working relationships with colleagues and partners.
• Experience working in a virtual environment with remote partners and teams.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office.


• Preferred Qualifications
• Experience working with Microsoft Access