[Hiring] Senior Product Manager @State of Colorado

Role Description

We are looking for an innovative and experienced technical Senior Product Manager to join our team at OIT. In this pivotal role, you will contribute to the development and delivery of technology solutions that drive business success. You will serve as a vital liaison between stakeholders, service management, and the development team, ensuring that product requirements for the Salesforce and other SaaS based platforms are clearly defined, prioritized, and delivered on schedule.

As a Senior Product Manager, you will play a crucial role in shaping our Platform Services product strategy and ensuring that our solutions not only meet, but exceed customer expectations. Your influence will drive outcomes that align with our strategic goals while promoting a highly tactical approach in a collaborative and supportive environment.

We're looking for an individual who wants to do the best work of their career in service of the public to design, deliver, and continuously improve services that work for Coloradans.

Essential Functions

• Write and maintain a well-groomed backlog using user stories that are outcome-oriented, appropriately sized, and grounded in real constituent needs.
• Draft initial product backlogs for RFPs, translating problem spaces into indicative user stories that structure procurement without locking the pod into fixed, rigid scope.
• Apply frameworks such as Value vs. Effort or "Now/Next/Later" to make and defend prioritization decisions.
• Proactively manage scope by saying "no" clearly and constructively to work that does not serve the current priority.
• Run essential agile planning cycles, including sprint planning, refinement, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Conduct quarterly roadmap conversations with stakeholders to align long-term goals with delivery capacity.
• Regularly update the Director of Platform Services, IT Director, and program staff about status in terms of outcomes (mission impact) rather than just progress (activity).
• Partner with Service Designers to understand, apply, and interpret journey maps, blueprints, and problem frames, translating these artifacts into actionable backlog inputs.
• Define and track objectives and key results (OKRs) and success metrics; evaluate and communicate when shipped features fail to deliver expected outcomes.
• Build the product ownership capacity of agency staff over time, ensuring the agency becomes a stronger partner rather than a dependent.
• Manage the product's lifecycle from discovery through to ongoing continuous improvement.
• Collaborate deeply with engineering to validate technical architecture decisions.
• Collaborate with the Delivery Engineer on build/buy/SaaS evaluations, contributing backlog context, mission-impact perspective, and constituent needs to inform the technical decision.

Qualifications

• Knowledge of product management fundamentals, including backlog ownership, user story writing, prioritization frameworks such as value vs. effort or now/next/later, and what it means to govern a product rather than a project.
• Knowledge of agile planning and development cycles: sprint planning, refinement, reviews, and retrospectives work, and the PM's role is in each.
• Knowledge of user-centered design principles sufficient to work productively with the Service Designer, interpret research findings, and translate constituent needs into backlog priorities.
• Knowledge of State agency program context with regard to the way in which Colorado agencies deliver services, make decisions, and structure program priorities.
• Knowledge of the product lifecycle from discovery through to continuous improvement.
• Awareness of the build/buy/SaaS tradeoff space, common state IT patterns, and how technology investment decisions get made and funded in state government.
• Ability to define and develop meaningful success metrics that go beyond delivery activity toward mission impact.
• Ability to decline work that doesn't serve the current priority, and document that decision in a way that keeps stakeholders informed rather than surprised.
• Ability to communicate product status in terms of outcomes, not just progress.
• Ability to facilitate stakeholder conversations that produce ranked decisions, rather than a list of any and all desired items.
• Ability to distinguish between user needs and stakeholder “wants,” make operational decisions based on that information, and bring stakeholders into alignment.
• Ability to own the product's success metrics and track them honestly, including when a shipped feature isn't delivering the expected outcome.
• Ability to adapt communication style and level of detail to the audience.
• Ability to define long-term product vision and translate ambiguous business problems into measurable outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to use customer insights, metrics, and experimentation to drive prioritization and investment choices.

Requirements

• A minimum of five (5) years of product management experience, with a proven track record of owning and launching complex technical products or platforms.
• Experience with Agile Methodologies: working competency with Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban) and tracking tools like Jira or Rally.

Preferred Qualifications

• Relevant certifications such as Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Pragmatic Institute Product Management, or Professional Product Manager (PPM).
• Experience evaluating software solutions (e.g., custom build, SaaS, commercial off-the-shelf) and managing vendor relationships to ensure external technical deliveries align with agile, outcome-oriented product roadmaps.
• Strong architectural and technical fluency, with the ability to evaluate technical trade-offs, understand system design, and collaborate deeply with principal engineers.
• Direct experience working with APIs, cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure/GCP), microservices, data pipelines, or complex software development frameworks.
• Experience querying data independently using SQL or interpreting data using technical analytics tools.
• Experience leading decision-making across engineering, design, marketing, and sales without direct authority.
• Experience translating ambiguous, high-level business goals into concrete, data-driven product requirements and long-term technical roadmaps.

Conditions of Employment

• OIT employees must comply with any screening procedures in place at state agency locations where they might perform work.
• A pre-employment background check will be conducted as part of the selection process.
• This position may require travel within the specified geographic area, and to locations across the state as needed.

Supplemental Information

If this posting indicates “remote from anywhere in CO” in the title, periodic reporting to the primary state work location designated for the position is required. All remote work must be performed in Colorado.

While candidates from out of state will be considered for this role, the candidate selected for the position must relocate and reside in Colorado on the first day of their new position.

The Governor's Office of Information Technology does NOT offer sponsored Visas for employment purposes.