Technical Product Manager - IT Operations & Security - phoenixteam

Technical Product Manager – IT Operations & Security - Federal

Overview

The Technical Product Manager – IT Operations & Security serves as the primary delivery lead for the Operations workstream of a large federal technology program. This workstream encompasses approximately 15 active and planned initiatives spanning infrastructure modernization, secrets and privileged access management, and application enhancements required to comply with agency-wide technology mandates.

Projects within this workstream span a diverse technology environment, including Linux and Windows server infrastructure, Oracle databases, Salesforce, MuleSoft integrations, and AWS Lambda-based serverless components. The Technical Product Manager does not need to be a hands-on engineer in each of these technologies, but must be technical enough to understand their role in the environment, ask informed questions of technical leads, evaluate staffing needs and candidate qualifications against them, and factor their complexity and interdependencies into roadmap, staffing, and cost decisions.

This role owns the roadmap and prioritization of the Operations portfolio, working hand-in-hand with the VA Operations lead to sequence work based on return on investment, risk, dependencies, and mandates originating from other parts of VA. At any given time, 3-4 projects are in flight, requiring the Product Manager to balance active delivery with forward planning, staffing, and stakeholder management.

The Technical Product Manager builds and maintains a trusted, collaborative relationship with the VA Operations lead, translating client priorities into an actionable roadmap and staffing plan. This individual is technical enough to evaluate resumes and assess the qualifications of infrastructure, security, and DevSecOps engineers proposed for project staffing, and is comfortable partnering with technical leads to validate approach and level of effort.

The role also contributes directly to business development by helping shape cost proposals for new Operations projects, bringing forward lessons learned, estimating assumptions, and staffing models from prior engagements. Success requires strong program and project management discipline, the judgment to manage cross-portfolio impacts on the broader program's other technology products, and the interpersonal skill to keep a demanding federal client, delivery teams, and internal leadership aligned.

Key Functions

• Serve as the primary point of contact and relationship owner with the VA Operations lead, building trust and a collaborative working partnership.
• Maintain and continuously refine a prioritized roadmap across approximately 15 Operations projects, incorporating ROI, risk, technical dependencies, and VA-wide mandates.
• Facilitate prioritization discussions with the VA Operations lead, providing data-driven recommendations and clearly articulated trade-offs.