Principal Product Manager

Job Description

Job Description

Job Title: Principal Product Manager
Location: Washington, DC (On-site)
Employment Type: Contract (W2 through ZipStaff — No C2C or 1099)

About the Opportunity:

ZipStaff is seeking a Principal Product Manager to own mission-critical products for a major passenger-rail / transportation organization in Washington, DC.

You will lead Rail Incident Management, Service Recovery, and Disruption Operations — strategy, roadmap, and value delivery across operations, technology, and executive stakeholders. This is a senior product seat in a high-stakes operational environment, not a backlog-grooming-only PM role.

What You’ll Do:

• Define multi-year product strategy, vision, roadmap, and success metrics for incident management and service-disruption capabilities.
• Act as the primary liaison among rail operations, customer experience, technology, and executive leadership.
• Prioritize investment and backlog by operational risk, customer impact, business value, and regulatory alignment.

• Work with Agile / SAFe teams across interdependent workstreams.
• Set product decision frameworks, manage dependencies, and stay aligned to safety, regulatory, and operational policy.
• Lead discovery with field staff and operational control centers; write requirements, acceptance criteria, and workflows.
• Use data, customer feedback, and performance metrics to improve product and operational resilience.
• Brief executives on strategy, progress, dependencies, risks, and ROI.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of product management on complex, mission-critical enterprise solutions.
• Experience with incident management, service recovery, and service-continuity platforms.
• Proven work in Agile and SAFe , managing cross-team dependencies without direct authority.
• Advanced use of Jira Align, Confluence, Visio, Figma, and Microsoft Office.
• Strong executive presence, facilitation, and decision-making in ambiguous, high-stakes settings.
• Bachelor’s in Business, IT, Engineering, or equivalent experience
• Ability to work on-site in Washington, DC.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Transportation, logistics, or operational-platform product experience.
• SAFe POPM, Pragmatic Institute, AIPMM, or equivalent.
• PMP.

About ZipStaff:

ZipStaff partners with leading organizations to connect skilled product leaders with high-impact contract opportunities. We focus on quality matches and long-term success. To apply , please submit your resume highlighting principal-level product ownership, incident/service-recovery platforms, and SAFe delivery.