Contract Product Manager (Evergreen)

What to know
As a Product Manager at Blue State, you’ll work with leading nonprofits and progressive organizations to reimagine how they engage audiences through their digital product suite, which can include websites and marketing platforms. Working closely with our Tech, Strategy, Design, and Analytics teams, you’ll conduct user research, identify product requirements, help define content strategy, create sprint plans, write acceptance criteria, and test and iterate on deliverables for Blue State’s unique portfolio of clients.

About the role

• Assess clients’ digital platforms, identify goals, and communicate solutions that help clients achieve their strategic objectives.
• Cultivate an understanding of users’ needs and behaviors through interviews, analytics, and other forms of research.
• Create personas and user journeys, and represent users’ perspective in planning sessions.
• Conduct product research and lead feature ideation and prioritization sessions.
• Evaluate all proposed features against the product scope. Provide creative recommendations based on your technical expertise when features don’t fit in the budget.
• Make the tough calls when a sprint plan is over budget.
• Write and maintain functional requirements, ensuring that all functionality, user flows, and edge cases are understood by stakeholders.
• Document your work, ranging from lofi sketches to detailed acceptance criteria.
• Be the client-facing expert on product functionality, answering questions and solving problems.
• Develop testing and measurement plans in coordination with strategists and analysts.
• Manage agile product builds, overseeing sprint plans, standups, and backlogs.
• Use project management tools such as Jira to track progress and communicate status.
• Manage stakeholder feedback, ensuring that issues are reported and prioritized correctly.
• Use your tech skills to clarify defects for developers and augment bug reports with necessary context.
• Approach in-office working with a hybrid model. On-site presence is welcome for US staff who are within commuting distance of the NY or DC office. Managers retain discretion to require in-person attendance for folks on their discipline or client teams as necessary, including for those whose roles require them to be in person.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in a product management role or similar role, and experience with website projects.
• Experience with CMS-driven websites, such as those built on WordPress.
• Familiarity with and interest in marketing platforms, including CRMs, and data and personalization technology used by organizations to engage and mobilize their supporters.
• Familiarity with HTML, CSS, and JS. You will not need to write any code, but you will need to speak to the capabilities of common web technologies.
• Experienced with using qualitative and quantitative data to make product decisions.
• Experienced with using wireframes to communicate recommendations to design teams.
• Cognizant of the overall AI landscape and the ability to evaluate AI outputs critically.
• Willingness to wear multiple hats and get into the weeds across product needs including UX design, content strategy, and user research.
• Excellent communication skills. Ability to interact with technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.
• Strong collaborator and relationship builder. Colleagues know they can come to you for help working through issues or opportunities.
• Empathy, positivity, respect, and the ability to be a role model at Blue State.

Qualifications

• Diversity is a necessity, not a nice-to-have. We encourage those from underrepresented communities — women, people of color, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, those with disabilities, and people at all the intersections in between — to apply.

Skills

• Experience with website projects.
• Experience with CMS-driven websites, such as those built on WordPress.
• Familiarity with and interest in marketing platforms, including CRMs, and data and personalization technology used by organizations to engage and mobilize their supporters.
• Familiarity with HTML, CSS, and JS.
• Experience with qualitative and quantitative data to make product decisions.
• Experience with wireframes to communicate recommendations to design teams.
• Understanding of the overall AI landscape and the ability to evaluate AI outputs critically.
• Willingness to wear multiple hats and get into the weeds across product needs including UX design, content strategy, and user research.

Benefits

At Blue State, diversity is a necessity, not a nice-to-have. We encourage those from underrepresented communities — women, people of color, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, those with disabilities, and people at all the intersections in between — to apply. Even if you don’t think your current skill set checks every box below, but this role seems to align with your strengths and interests, we want to hear from you. Your privacy is important to us. You can find out more information on how we handle your data for recruiting purposes in our Privacy Policy for Recruitment.

Pay

The salary range for this position is $60-$90 per hour; compensation will be commensurate with experience.