{"id":3095925,"url":"https://alion.io/job/spruceid-forward-deployed-product-manager","title":"Forward Deployed Product Manager","company":{"id":43896,"name":"SpruceID","domain":"spruceid.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/spruceid","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"}},"role":"Solutions","role_family":"Solutions","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":6,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"FedRAMP","optional":true},{"name":"IAM","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-22T16:06:30Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-22","last_verified_at":"2026-10-24T02:50:09Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":1},"description":"Forward Deployed Product Manager\nLocation: U.S. (Remote, but must be based in the United States) Travel: Depending on the assigned engagement, substantial travel to state government partner sites may be expected Clearance: Must be eligible and able to pass a government background check\nABOUT SPRUCE\nSpruce builds privacy-preserving, standards-based digital identity and credentialing solutions that give individuals control of their information while enabling governments and enterprises to deliver secure, interoperable services. We partner with private and public-sector organizations to modernize how identity is issued, verified, and used.\nTHE ROLE\nWe are seeking a Forward Deployed Product Manager to sit alongside our government customers during discovery, architecture, and design - sometimes while engineering is building - and help them work out what they actually need, and why.\nYou will support specific deployments, beginning with the California Career Passport Program - a statewide education and workforce credential initiative. Much of this work is customer-driven today and requires hands-on engagement with individual implementations, even as we work toward consolidating these efforts into reusable Spruce products. Holding both of those at once is the job. Beyond product discovery, you also own ecosystem adoption - getting issuers to issue, verifiers to verify, and learners to adopt - with startup-style resourcefulness and measurable KPIs.\nThe surface area is broad. One week you may be shaping the roadmap for a statewide digital identity wallet, the next a citizen-facing portal, the next the APIs and microservices underneath. You are responsible for the end-to-end product picture and for understanding how those pieces fit together.\nThis is not a roadmap-and-quarterly-planning role. We move quickly, put work in front of small pilot groups, and let evidence change the plan. At the same time, this is identity infrastructure, where security, accessibility, and reliability genuinely matter. Knowing what can be iterated on quickly and what absolutely cannot is central to doing this job well. In some cases, you may source and build that pilot group yourself.\nCORE RESPONSIBILITIES\n1. CUSTOMER-EMBEDDED DISCOVERY\nWork directly with state government partners through discovery, architecture, and design\n\nUnderstand their users, policy environment, constraints, and workflows first-hand\n\nLook past stated requirements to the underlying problem the customer is actually trying to solve\n\nAct as a trusted product advisor to public sector stakeholders\n\n2. END-TO-END PRODUCT OWNERSHIP\nHold the full product picture across a statewide wallet, citizen-facing portals, and the APIs and services beneath them\n\nHelp partners shape their roadmap and priorities, and make sure what gets built solves the real problem\n\nPartner closely with engineering, design, and delivery leads from definition through deployment\n\n3. HANDS-ON USER RESEARCH\nPersonally design and run research: talk to users, stakeholders, and end users directly, conduct discovery, prototype where appropriate\n\nSynthesize what you learn and translate it into product decisions and roadmap direction\n\nBring user evidence into conversations where requirements are often treated as fixed\n\nThere is no research team sitting behind this role. You do this work yourself.\n4. INFLUENCE IN A PUBLIC SECTOR CONTEXT\nNavigate government relationships thoughtfully while introducing evidence that may challenge stated priorities\n\nInfluence direction without damaging the relationship\n\nCommunicate clearly across users, policy, technical constraints, and business priorities\n\n5. PATTERN RECOGNITION AND PRODUCT STRATEGY\nIdentify patterns across customers and ask what individual deployments teach us about broader product opportunities\n\nConnect customer needs to reusable product capabilities\n\nRecognize where a problem extends beyond a single agency, and shape product strategy from evidence rather than incoming requests\n\n6. JUDGMENT ABOUT PACE VERSUS RISK\nPut work in front of small pilot groups early and let findings redirect the roadmap\n\nDraw clear lines around what cannot be iterated on loosely: security, accessibility, and reliability\n\nMake and defend those calls with engineering and with customers\n\n7. ECOSYSTEM BUILDING & ADOPTION\nDrive adoption of digital credentials across the ecosystem - onboard issuers, verifiers, and institutional partners with startup GTM resourcefulness\n\nFind high-leverage partnerships (university research programs, workforce boards, employer networks) that multiply impact beyond your own direct effort\n\nOwn adoption KPIs and find creative, resourceful ways to move them\n\nAct as a credible product advisor to executive stakeholders including agency directors, university leadership, and ecosystem partners\n\nWHAT YOU BRING\n6-10+ years of product experience at startups or building new product initiatives\n\nTime in an early-stage environment where you personally shipped product and moved quickly\n\nZero-to-one experience: you have taken a product from nothing to shipped, or identified and pursued entirely new opportunities\n\nIdeally, meaningful experience in education, workforce development, or adjacent sectors\n\nExperience in government or another highly regulated environment\n\nGenuine customer-embedded experience - forward-deployed product, solutions PM, implementation, or founder-led delivery all count\n\nDemonstrated, hands-on user research: you have designed and run discovery yourself and turned it into product decisions\n\nEnough 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\n\nComfort with ambiguity, a broad surface area, and shifting priorities\n\nCredible at the executive level - comfortable holding a room with agency directors, university chancellors, and institutional partners\n\nBased in the U.S. and excited to engage directly with state government partners\n\nPassion for workforce development and expanding opportunity through technology\n\nNICE TO HAVE\nBackground in digital identity, IAM / ICAM, credentialing, or authentication systems\n\nFamiliarity with accessibility standards, FedRAMP, or NIST frameworks\n\nExperience navigating public sector procurement and contracting environments\n\nPrior engineering or deeply technical systems experience\n\nExperience building or growing multi-sided ecosystems, marketplaces, or platform adoption\n\nBackground in education technology, learning and employment records, or workforce development programs\n\nWHY THIS ROLE MATTERS\nShape identity systems that millions of residents will actually use\n\nWork directly with senior government stakeholders on mission-critical infrastructure\n\nOperate at the intersection of policy, engineering, research, and real-world delivery\n\nHelp turn individual state deployments into durable product capability\n\nHelp build the education and workforce credential ecosystem that connects Californians to opportunity\n\nJoin a small, high-trust team where autonomy and judgment matter\n\nAt SpruceID, we value diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. 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