Career Opportunity

PRODUCT MANAGER, PLATFORMS & INFRASTRUCTURE

Recruitment: RTF0119105-01134186

Published: November 23, 2022

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About:

The San Francisco Digital Services team works across City departments to build user-centered digital services. Its mission is to make it easy for all residents to access the City’s 967 services online, from any device.

Over the past five years, the team has grown and now supports a range of digital services, including sf.gov, the City’s new website. This site has been at the forefront of the City’s Covid-19 response and will replace more than 100 separate websites. Built with Accessibility and Equity as core design principles, it provides a consistent user-centered experience for all San Franciscans.

In addition to sf.gov, Digital Services has a full-time product team dedicated to the development of DAHLIA, the City’s online affordable housing application service. Digital Services is also actively engaged in making permitting digital, working with the City’s Permit Center team and all permitting departments.

DataSF, the City’s strategic data team, has recently moved into Digital Services, and this gives an opportunity to bring the City’s data practices closer to its digital services. The vision is to create a seamless data lifecycle between transactions, data aggregation, reporting, and decision-making.

Digital Services is at an exciting moment of change. Having established credibility and a track record of delivery, the team must now turn its attention to scaling. The team must scale its impact by empowering other departments to build services themselves, using platforms provided by Digital Services.  Digital Services should become the source of standards, platforms, and microservices that allow the City to make services for residents accessible online. This will be achieved through training, support, standardization, shared platforms, and Citywide policies. Digital Services will make its platforms the easiest, fastest, most accessible, and most cost-effective way to build services. It will work with departments to ensure that platforms meet not only the needs of San Franciscans but make staff’s lives easier as well.

Appointment Type: Permanent Exempt (PEX), this position is excluded by the Charter from the competitive Civil Service examination process and shall serve at the discretion of the Appointing Officer.

Role description

As the Product Manager for Platforms & Infrastructure, you will provide product and platform guidance to support San Francisco Digital Services’ product vision and strategy. You will work closely with City and Digital Services’ engineering leaders and team members to build platform products that will be used by City staff as well as San Francisco residents and businesses.

You will work with the Product Director and a multidisciplinary team of engineers, designers, user researchers and content strategists, to help build core pieces of infrastructure that will help the Digital Services team ship services to residents more effectively. These core pieces of infrastructure include, but are not limited to:

• Launching an open source form authoring tool for City-wide usage
• Working on design and accessibility best practices
• Evaluating and managing the tools we use to run our end-to-end services
• Improving localization best practices
• Working and training other product managers and team members on efficient usage of the platforms you manage
• Working with the delivery team to launch City-wide services

You will work with the product and engineering teams on scope, architecture and strategy on current and upcoming products and services. You will also lead product development in key projects. You will conduct research with stakeholders to understand how to prioritize platform and infrastructure requirements.

You will help shape the future of City services by ensuring that the underlying systems work efficiently. 

Essential Functions

Stakeholders

• Collaborate with other technical teams within SF City Government
• Collaborate with technical teams in other parts of government
• Work with team members to create, launch, maintain and support platform services used by other City staff

Day-to-day / Product:

• Work in SF Digital Services’ platform team to launch, maintain and support form authoring tools and supporting microservices
• Lead product roadmap for internal platforms and microservices
• Collaborate on user research and user testing for platform products
• Champion Digital Services’ vision of providing platform products to City staff, help staff scale up their service levels and quality
• Track, Implement and improve accessibility and inclusivity in City services   

How to qualify

1.  An associates degree in computer science, information systems, or a related field or its equivalent in terms of total course credits; AND

2.  Three (3) years of professional product management experience.

SUBSTITUTION: Additional experience as described above may be substituted for the required degree on a year-for-year basis (up to a maximum of two (2) years). One (1) year is equivalent to thirty (30) semester units/ forty-five (45) quarter units with a minimum of 10 semester / 15 quarter units in computer science or a closely related field.

Desirable Qualifications

• Hands-on experience designing outstanding web-based products.  Experience re-designing complex products, services, or transactions to be more simple, beautiful, and easy to use.
• Product team experience including experience leading the user research and user testing process; writing user stories; managing roadmaps, leading agile scrum methodology, managing stakeholder relationships, knowledge of modern web frameworks, familiarity with API-driven architecture.
• Strong understanding of modern web product development.
• Strong working knowledge of Lean and Agile practices.  Experience working within Agile teams and incorporating user testing & feedback into agile processes.
• Exceptional verbal communication skills with the ability to effectively influence and communicate cross-functionally.  Experience navigating complex organizations is a bonus.
• A personal interest in public service or civic technology.
• Demonstrable and practical experience, in the public or private sectors, of transformational change to business processes and systems to deliver improved user experience and cost savings.
• Development experience, including the knowledge to interface with developers about coding practices, delivery and acceptance processes, testing, etc.
• Experience with metrics and analytics that inform the success of products, defining KPIs, tracking conversion funnels, and extracting insight from data.
• Experience with designing and implementing user research that informs decision-making of products or services.

Important: Your application must include a cover letter that explains why you are applying for this job, and how your experience makes you a good fit for this role. To upload these items, please attach using the "additional attachments" function.

Guidance for Applying:  Applicants must include all relevant job experience in the online application.

Verification: Applicants may be required to submit verification of qualifying education and experience at any point in the application and/or departmental selection process. Written verification (proof) of qualifying experience must verify that the applicant meets the minimum qualifications stated on the announcement. Written verification must be submitted on employer’s official letterhead, specifying name of employee, dates of employment, types of employment (part-time/full-time), job title(s), description of duties performed, and the verification must be signed by the employer. City employees will receive credit for the duties of the class to which they are appointed. Credit for experience obtained outside of the employee’s class will be allowed only if recorded in accordance with the provisions of the Civil Service Commission Rules. Experience claimed in self-employment must be supported by documents verifying income, earnings, business license and experience comparable to the minimum qualifications of the position. Copies of income tax papers or other documents listing occupations and total earnings must be submitted. If education verification is required, information on how to verify education requirements, including verifying foreign education credits or degree equivalency, can be found at http://sfdhr.org/index.aspx?page=456.

Note: Falsifying one’s education, training, or work experience or attempted deception on the application may result in disqualification for this and future job opportunities with the City and County of San Francisco. 

What else should I know?

• Information About The Hiring Process
• Conviction History
• Employee Benefits Overview  
• Equal Employment Opportunity 
• Disaster Service Worker
• ADA Accommodation
• Veterans Preference
• Right to Work
• Copies of Application Documents
• Diversity Statement

Compensation:  $111,722 - $140,582 annually

Applicants are encouraged to apply immediately as this recruitment may close at any time, but not before January 27, 2023.

Late or incomplete submissions will not be considered. Mailed, hand delivered or faxed documents/applications will not be accepted.

In line with the Official Public Health Order to slow the spread of COVID-19, “shelter-in-place” has been issued for all San Francisco residents that is expected to be in effect until further notice. As a result, Department of Human Resources (DHR)’s office (located at 1 South Van Ness Avenue, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103) is currently closed to the general public. If you have any questions, please feel free to email the Human Resources Analyst listed on this announcement.

Note:  While this position can work remotely, employees are required to attend in-person meetings on a regular basis throughout the City.

Applications will be screened for relevant qualifying experience. Additional screening mechanisms may be implemented in order to determine candidates’ qualifications. Only those applicants who most closely meet the needs of the Agency will be invited to participate in the selection process. Applicants meeting the minimum qualifications are not guaranteed advancement to the interview. Qualified applicants with disabilities requiring reasonable accommodation in the selection process must contact the Agency by phone at (415) 554-6000 or, if hearing impaired at (415) 554-6015 (TTY).

CONDITION OF EMPLOYMENT:  All City and County of San Francisco employees are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of employment. Someone is fully vaccinated when 14 days have passed since they received the final dose of a two-shot vaccine or a dose of a one-shot vaccine. Any new hire must present proof of full vaccination status to be appointed. Any new hire who will be routinely assigned or occasionally enter High-Risk Settings, must provide proof of having received a COVID-19 booster vaccine by March 1, 2022, or once eligible.

The City and County of San Francisco encourages women, minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Applicants will be considered regardless of their sex, race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition (associated with cancer, a history of cancer, or genetic characteristics), HIV/AIDS status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, or other protected category under the law.