Product Manager

Team: Program/Project Management

Location: Washington, D.C.

Commitment: Regular

Workplace Type: onsite

Salary:

Job Description

At Agile Defense, we know that action defines the outcome and new challenges require new solutions. That’s why we look to the future and embrace change with an unmovable spirit and the courage to build for what comes next.
 
Agile Defense is seeking a Product Manager to support a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program delivering mission-critical digital capabilities. You will work with CBP stakeholders and a multidisciplinary delivery team to understand operational problems, establish product priorities, and guide capabilities from discovery through delivery and improvement.
 
As Product Manager, you will work at the intersection of mission needs, user experience, technology, and delivery. You will partner closely with UX practitioners, engineers, technical leads, program leadership, and customer stakeholders to turn broad needs into clear product goals and manageable increments of work.
 
This role requires a design-oriented approach to product management. You should be curious about the problem before prescribing a solution, comfortable working through ambiguity, and able to use research, facilitation, prototyping, and iterative learning to improve product decisions. You will also bring practical Agile experience, helping the team maintain a healthy backlog, facilitating planning and collaboration when needed, surfacing blockers, and keeping delivery connected to customer and user outcomes.
 
As an Agile Defense employee, you will receive a benefits package that includes health, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) with company match, paid time off, paid holidays, and annual tuition and training assistance.
 
Responsibilities and Objectives
 
Objective 1: Understand Mission Problems and Define Product Direction 
• Work directly with CBP stakeholders and users to understand operational needs, workflows, constraints, and desired outcomes.
• Partner with UX practitioners to conduct discovery activities such as interviews, workshops, observation, journey mapping, and usability research.
• Help the team distinguish between requested features and the underlying problems users and stakeholders are trying to solve.
• Translate research, customer input, operational needs, and program priorities into clear product goals and requirements.
• Maintain enough product direction to guide near- and medium-term delivery while adapting as the team learns.
 
Objective 2: Manage the Product Backlog and Guide Delivery 
• Develop, prioritize, and maintain a product backlog that connects individual work items to customer needs and product outcomes.
• Translate product goals into features, user stories, acceptance criteria, and other forms of work the delivery team can understand and act on.
• Work with UX and technical leads to break complex problems into smaller increments that can be designed, built, tested, and evaluated.
• Make day-to-day prioritization decisions based on customer value, user needs, technical dependencies, risk, and available capacity.
•  Maintain clear product documentation and ensure decisions, priorities, and requirements remain visible to the team.
Objective 3: Integrate Product, Design, and Technical Decision
• Making Work closely with UX, engineering, architecture, security, and other technical disciplines throughout discovery and delivery.
• Ensure user research and usability findings influence product priorities rather than treating UX as a separate activity.
• Facilitate collaborative sessions that help the team explore alternatives, challenge assumptions, and reach decisions.
• Balance user needs, mission priorities, technical feasibility, security requirements, and delivery constraints when evaluating solutions.
• Use prototypes, demonstrations, experiments, or other lightweight methods to test important assumptions before committing significant development effort.
Objective 4: Enable Effective Agile Team Delivery 
• Participate in and, when appropriate, facilitate ba 

Education and Background

High School diploma or equivalent required

Years of Experience

7 years

Required Skills

• Experience managing or contributing to the delivery of complex digital products or services.
• Experience applying human-centered or design-thinking approaches to product discovery, problem framing, and solution development.
• Ability to move comfortably between customer discovery, product strategy, team facilitation, and delivery without losing focus on the problem being solved.
• Experience translating customer and user needs into product requirements, prioritized backlogs, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Experience working closely with UX, engineering, architecture, security, or other technical disciplines throughout product delivery.
• Experience facilitating Agile team activities such as backlog refinement, sprint planning, retrospectives, reviews, or similar collaborative planning sessions.
• Working knowledge of Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or related Agile delivery approaches.
• Ability to identify and communicate product risks, dependencies, tradeoffs, and unresolved decisions.
• Strong written, verbal, facilitation, and stakeholder communication skills.
• Experience using product and Agile delivery tools such as Jira and Confluence or comparable platforms. 

Preferred Skills

• Experience supporting DHS, CBP, federal law enforcement, or another federal technology program.
• Product Owner, Scrum Master, SAFe, or comparable Agile certification or experience.
• Experience designing or delivering data-intensive, workflow-heavy, or mission-critical applications.
• Familiarity with AI/ML-enabled products, analytics, automation, or emerging technologies.
• Understanding of the product considerations associated with AI, including human oversight, explainability, confidence, and uncertain system outputs.
• Experience working with user research and usability testing as part of an iterative product development process.
• Familiarity with federal accessibility, security, privacy, or compliance requirements. 

Working Conditions

Office Environment

• Happy - Be Infectious. Happiness multiplies and creates a positive and connected environment where motivation and satisfaction have an outsized effect on everything we do.
• Helpful - Be Supportive. Being helpful is the foundation of teamwork, resulting in a supportive atmosphere where collaboration flourishes, and collective success is celebrated.
• Honest - Be Trustworthy. Honesty serves as our compass, ensuring transparent communication and ethical conduct, essential to who we are and the complex domains we support.
• Humble - Be Grounded. Success is not achieved alone, humility ensures a culture of mutual respect, encouraging open communication, and a willingness to learn from one another and take on any task.
• Hungry - Be Eager. Our hunger for excellence drives an insatiable appetite for innovation and continuous improvement, propelling us forward in the face of new and unprecedented challenges.
• Hustle - Be Driven. Hustle is reflected in our relentless work ethic, where we are each committed to going above and beyond to advance the mission and achieve success.