Public Sector Identity PM - Forward Deployed (Remote)

SpruceID; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

SpruceID seeks a Forward Deployed Product Manager to work alongside our government customers during discovery, architecture, and design. The role blends customer engagement with hands‑on product discovery, owning ecosystem adoption and measurable KPIs.

You will drive end‑to‑end product ownership across statewide wallets, citizen portals, and APIs, shaping roadmaps while ensuring security, accessibility, and reliability. Strong customer‑embedded, API‑savvy leadership is essential.

Qualifications

• 6–10+ years of product experience at startups or building new product initiatives.
• Time in an early‑stage environment where you personally shipped product and moved quickly.
• Zero-to-one experience: you have taken a product from nothing to shipped, or identified and pursued entirely new opportunities.
• Ideally, meaningful experience in education, workforce development, or adjacent sectors.
• Experience in government or another highly regulated environment.
• Genuine customer‑embedded experience - forward‑deployed product, solutions PM, implementation, or founder‑led delivery all count.
• Demonstrated, hands‑on user research: you have designed and run discovery yourself and turned it into product decisions
• Enough technical depth to sit comfortably with engineers and hold your own on APIs, services, and system design. You do not need to be an engineer
• Comfort with ambiguity, a broad surface area, and shifting priorities
• Credible at the executive level - comfortable holding a room with agency directors, university chancellors, and institutional partners
• Based in the U.S. and excited to engage directly with state government partners
• Passion for workforce development and expanding opportunity through technology

Responsibilities

• Work directly with state government partners through discovery, architecture, and design
• Understand their users, policy environment, constraints, and workflows first‑hand
• Look past stated requirements to the underlying problem the customer is actually trying to solve
• Act as a trusted product advisor to public sector stakeholders
• Hold the full product picture across a statewide wallet, citizen‑facing portals, and the APIs and services beneath them
• Help partners shape their roadmap and priorities, and make sure what gets built solves the real problem
• Partner closely with engineering, design, and delivery leads from definition through deployment
• Personally design and run research: talk to users, stakeholders, and end users directly
• Synthesize what you learn and translate it into product decisions and roadmap direction
• Bring user evidence into conversations where requirements are often treated as fixed
• Navigate government relationships thoughtfully while introducing evidence that may challenge stated priorities
• Influence direction without damaging the relationship
• Communicate clearly across users, policy, technical constraints, and business priorities
• Identify patterns across customers and ask what deployments teach us about broader opportunities
• Connect customer needs to reusable product capabilities
• Recognize where a problem extends beyond a single agency, and shape strategy from evidence
• Put work in front of small pilot groups early and let findings redirect the roadmap
• Draw lines around what cannot be iterated on loosely: security, accessibility, reliability
• Make and defend those calls with engineering and with customers
• Drive adoption of digital credentials across the ecosystem - onboard issuers, verifiers, and institutional partners
• Find high‑leverage partnerships that multiply impact beyond your own direct effort
• Own adoption KPIs and move them with creative, resourceful approaches
• Advise executives including agency directors, university leadership, and ecosystem partners

Skills

Product management

Public sector experience

User research

APIs & systems

Executive communication

Ambiguity tolerance

Ecosystem building

State government engagement

Zero-to-one experience

Education/workforce background

Job description

SpruceID seeks a Forward Deployed Product Manager to work alongside our government customers during discovery, architecture, and design. The role blends customer engagement with hands‑on product discovery, owning ecosystem adoption and measurable KPIs.

You will drive end‑to‑end product ownership across statewide wallets, citizen portals, and APIs, shaping roadmaps while ensuring security, accessibility, and reliability. Strong customer‑embedded, API‑savvy leadership is essential.