Product Lifestyle Team Lead

Position Summary

The VA Product Lifecycle Lead is a senior leadership role responsible for driving enterprise-wide governance, transformation, and alignment of SaaS and PaaS product lifecycle operations across the Department of Veterans Affairs' Digital Transformation Center (DTC) environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead enterprise product lifecycle governance across SaaS, PaaS, cybersecurity, modernization, and customer success initiatives, ensuring alignment with strategic business objectives.
• Establish and maintain governance standards for product intake, prioritization, delivery, implementation, sustainment, and continuous improvement.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration across product teams, Centers of Excellence (COEs), system integrators, cybersecurity, and executive stakeholders to ensure successful delivery.
• Represent the product lifecycle organization in executive governance forums, providing strategic leadership, resolving escalations, and translating leadership priorities into actionable roadmaps.
• Lead modernization initiatives by advancing cloud adoption, workflow automation, AI-enabled capabilities, and digital transformation while balancing innovation with security and operational readiness.
• Ensure compliance with federal cybersecurity, privacy, and governance requirements, supporting ATO readiness and alignment with applicable regulations and standards.
• Develop executive dashboards, KPIs, scorecards, and reporting that provide visibility into program performance, risks, delivery progress, and business value.
• Identify and mitigate program risks, dependencies, and stakeholder challenges to ensure successful lifecycle execution and informed decision-making.
• Standardize lifecycle processes, governance frameworks, and operational best practices to improve efficiency, scalability, and delivery consistency.
• Mentor and lead cross-functional teams by fostering accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and excellence in product lifecycle management.
• Embed cybersecurity, privacy, data protection, and access control requirements into lifecycle planning and product delivery execution.
• Ensure lifecycle activities align with federal IT and cybersecurity frameworks including FISMA, FedRAMP, NIST 800-53, NIST AI RMF, FIPS 199, NIST 800-60, and VA policy requirements.
• Cook up coordination with security engineering, infrastructure, privacy, governance, and vendor teams to reduce time-to-ATO and improve audit evidence collection.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience leading federal IT, cybersecurity, product lifecycle, enterprise modernization, or large-scale digital transformation programs; 10+ years preferred for senior program leadership roles.
• Direct experience supporting VA, DTC, or comparable federal health/mission IT environments, with the ability to operate effectively with senior government stakeholders.
• Strong knowledge of SaaS, PaaS, cloud transformation, enterprise data platforms, workflow automation, product onboarding, and lifecycle governance models.
• Deep understanding of federal cybersecurity and compliance requirements including FISMA, FedRAMP, NIST 800-53, ATO readiness, FIPS 199, NIST 800-60, and secure system implementation practices.
• Proven ability to design KPI-driven dashboards, scorecards, risk reporting, lifecycle metrics, and executive briefings that support decision-making and operational transparency.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical, cybersecurity, and delivery issues for executive and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AI governance, secure generative AI adoption, or development of AI security/control baselines within a federal environment.
• Experience leading enterprise modernization initiatives involving cloud migration, AI-enabled analytics, RPA, Oracle or enterprise database optimization, or large-scale platform consolidation.
• Experience improving executive reporting cycles, operational transparency, or delivery performance through dashboards, lifecycle scorecards, and metrics-based governance.
• Experience securing contract growth, expanding mission support, or identifying scalable solutions that address security, modernization, or AI enablement gaps.
• Experience mentoring and developing technical program leaders, cybersecurity staff, engineers, consultants, or delivery managers.
• Certifications such as PMP, CSPO, CSM, SAFe, CISSP, CISM, or comparable program, product, Agile, or cybersecurity credentials.