Product Manager II, Discovery (Term-Limited)

This is a hybrid role that has in-office requirements of two (2) days per week or eight (8) days per month in New York, NY. This is a three-year term-limited position.

About the role

The ACLU Technology Department provides trusted, dependable, and impactful analytics, engineering, as well as product management and product design expertise for the ACLU. In partnership with experts across the ACLU, the technology team delivers best-in-class solutions, services, and innovation that advance the ACLU mission and organizational priorities. The tech team strives to ensure the ACLU leads by example in the ethical use of technology by maintaining privacy and security standards, using directional insights to inform programming and business strategy, designing best-in-class products to grow the ACLU supporter base, and stewarding high standards for algorithmic fairness, accountability, and transparency.

The Product & Engineering division includes engineers, product managers, product designers, and project operations experts who build and maintain engaging digital products and secure technical systems that accelerate the ACLU’s mission as our nationwide guardian of rights and liberties. This position is part of a collective bargaining unit represented by ACLU Staff United (ASU).

Responsibilities

• Lead deep product discovery for priority workstreams by partnering with tech leadership and directors across Privacy, InfoSec, Counsel, Legal Operations, Operations/HR, and high-touch Fundraising to explore complex problem spaces.
• Conduct structured discovery through interviews, listening tours, workshops, and stakeholder sessions to clarify underlying needs, constraints, risks, and success criteria.
• Focus on a small number of deeper, longer discovery tracks rather than many lightweight efforts.
• Facilitate alignment without formal authority by designing and leading collaborative workshops to align stakeholders on problem definitions, priorities, and options.
• Navigate competing perspectives and organizational constraints with diplomacy and clarity to build shared understanding across technical and non-technical teams.
• Support decision-making through evidence, facilitation, and structured framing.
• Staff and provide coordination support for the organization's Gen AI governance steering committee, documenting decisions and tracking action items to ensure team alignment.
• Produce clear, actionable discovery outputs by assessing and prioritizing build vs. buy solution adoption opportunities while balancing innovation with privacy, security, and legal compliance constraints.
• Develop validated problem statements, opportunity briefs, and solution assessments, documenting findings in ways accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Provide recommendations for next steps, such as initiating a vendor RFP, handing off scoped opportunities to internal product teams, or managing solution pilots.
• Support strategic experimentation and AI prototyping by occasionally proposing or supporting low-risk experiments or pilots and exploring internal AI tooling concepts for operational, legal, or fundraising use cases.
• Contribute to Tech Team planning and learning by influencing broader Tech Team strategy through insights from discovery work, informing roadmaps and prioritization, and building a stronger discovery practice within Tech.
• Develop business cases, strategies for pilots, monitoring, and evaluation frameworks for new tech tools.

Requirements

• Commitment to advancing the mission of the ACLU and centering principles of equity, inclusion, and belonging in your work by respecting and valuing multiple perspectives.
• Ability to work collaboratively and respectfully toward resolving obstacles and conflicts.
• Product management experience and familiarity with working with software development teams and vendors.
• Strong initiative and comfort working in ambiguity and shaping problems before solutions are defined.
• Strong track record of leading early-stage discovery in complex, stakeholder-rich environments and translating use cases and requirements into technical capabilities.
• Familiarity with emerging tech, including Gen AI.
• Experience working with non-technical partners to explore complex challenges.
• Experience in stakeholder engagement and communication, including running structured product discovery meetings, capturing decisions, and driving follow-ups offline across multiple stakeholder teams.
• Exceptional facilitation, listening, and synthesis skills.
• Ability to drive clarity and alignment without direct authority.
• Experience producing structured discovery outputs such as problem statements, opportunity briefs, solution assessments, and other alignment materials.
• Able to distill technical and non-technical inputs into clear documentation, including governance artifacts, memos, and executive summaries.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Benefits

• Generous paid time-off policy.
• Comprehensive healthcare benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Parental leave, gender-affirming care, and fertility treatment.
• 401k plan with employer match.
• Annual professional development funds, internal professional development programs, and workshops.

Pay

The annual salary for this position is $142,694 (Level F), reflecting the salary of a position based in New York, NY. Salaries are subject to a regional pay adjustment if authorization is granted to work outside of the location listed in this posting. For details on the pay structure, visit ACLU Geographic Pay Structure.