Principal Technical Product Manager

Your Impact

The technical product decisions you make will determine whether millions of Americans can access college. You’ll shape the infrastructure and developer experience that powers studentaid.gov — the system processing $120 billion in federal aid each year.

The Technical Product Challenge

You’ll own technical product strategy and execution for systems that handle:

• Platform infrastructure serving dozens of engineering teams shipping to millions of users
• CI/CD pipelines that determine whether teams ship daily or wait weeks
• API design connecting federal systems (IRS, SSA, DHS) with student aid platforms
• Technical debt prioritization balancing user needs with long-term system health
• Architecture decisions that will shape how the system evolves for the next decade

What You’ll Do

This is a hands-on technical product leadership role — you’ll write specs, review architecture proposals, make hard trade-off decisions, and unblock teams to ship faster. The specific methodology doesn’t matter — we need technical PMs who can bridge engineering and product to ship what users actually need. Tasks may include:

• Own technical roadmap for platform infrastructure, APIs, and developer tooling
• Translate complex technical work into value non-technical stakeholders understand
• Make prioritization decisions balancing tech debt, features, and reliability
• Work with engineering leaders to define architecture that serves product goals
• Define success metrics and track whether investments improve user outcomes
• Remove blockers preventing engineering teams from shipping

Who Succeeds Here

We’re looking for technical product managers who’ve shipped at scale and led without authority — typically a strong Technical PM at a top tech company or someone who transitioned from engineering to product leadership, with experience in most of the following:

You won’t have direct reports, but you’ll advocate for users while steering cross-functional, cross-agency teams with engineering, policy, comms, contractor partners, and legal in the mix to solve the hardest problems.

• Owned technical product strategy for platform, infrastructure, or developer tools serving millions of users
• Led technical roadmap decisions balancing user needs, engineering constraints, and business value
• Worked directly with engineers to shape architecture, APIs, or technical strategy
• Translated complex technical work into clear value propositions for non-technical stakeholders
• Made hard trade-off decisions between technical debt, new features, and reliability

Reality Check

Compensation: This is a GS-15 position — the highest rung on the standard government pay scale and roughly equivalent to a Staff or Principal Technical PM at a top technology company. Full federal benefits included.

The Environment: You’ll face legacy systems, federal compliance, and change-resistant stakeholders. However, you own your product decisions — shaping roadmaps, influencing requirements, and driving change through consensus rather than permission.

The Impact: Your products will impact more families than most consumer apps ever reach at one of the most consequential financial moments of their lives. Once you’re in, you have product autonomy rarely seen in government.

Interview Process

Our interview process is fully remote, consisting of 3-5 conversations that assess work experience, fit, and technical skills.