Senior Product Owner Manager

Speridian Technologies is recruiting for a Senior Product Owner Manager for our State of California Client, the Department of Healthcare Services, Behavioral Health. This person will be part of a long-term, fully budgeted, state-of-the-art, extremely vast technical modernization project.


This is a remote role; however, there may be meetings in the Sacramento area several times a year. Candidates are expected to work business hours, Monday-Friday, Pacific Time Zone.

Join DHCS's Behavioral Health Transformation: Where Purpose Meets Innovation
Location: Remote
Department: Department of Healthcare Services (DHCS), Behavioral Health Transformation (BHT)
Commitment: Full-Time Consultant (W2 employee of Speridian or 1099/IC for Speridian)


Why DHCS?
At DHCS we are leading a transformative journey in Behavioral Health, reshaping systems and services to ensure better outcomes for communities across California. Our Behavioral Health transformation initiative is more than a project-it's a movement to make California a leader in accessible, high-quality health services. We're setting the stage for a new era of government services built on agile methodologies, cutting-edge technology, continuous improvement, and a relentless commitment to serving the public good.
At DHCS, we're looking for innovators who are passionate about purposeful work and excited by the opportunity to drive lasting change through innovative solutions.

Our core values are what make us successful and define the impact we have on the DHCS program and California's citizens.

• Partnership: Respect Other, Practice Empathy, Earn Trust
• Ownership: Take Accountability, Show Reliability, Act with Integrity
• Grit: Bring Passion, Exhibit Perseverance, Demonstrate Resilience
• Value: Drive Outcomes, Maximize Impact, Keep Improving

Description
The Senior Product Owner Manager is accountable for the overall performance, delivery output, and professional growth of the Product Owner discipline across the organization. This role operates as a functional manager without direct civil service reporting authority, leading through accountability frameworks, performance standards, and decision rights rather than through formal supervision.
The Senior Product Owner Manager sets the bar for what "good" looks like in Product Ownership, holds Product Owners to measurable performance expectations, escalates persistent gaps to the appropriate civil service managers, and ensures the discipline consistently delivers predictable, high value outcomes aligned with Lean Delivery principles and Human Centered Design (HCD) practices.
Responsibilities List
Performance Management and Accountability

• Own the performance management framework for the Product Owner discipline, including competency models, role expectations, leveling criteria, and measurable performance indicators.
• Conduct regular performance reviews of Product Owner work product (backlog health, prioritization quality, stakeholder outcomes, delivery predictability) and document findings with evidence.
• Provide written performance input to civil service managers for use in formal evaluations, including specific examples of strengths, gaps, and required improvement areas.
• Set, monitor, and enforce performance expectations; issue formal performance improvement recommendations to the HCD & Product Chief.

Outcome: Product Owner performance is measurable, transparent, and consistently held to defined standards, with clear consequences and pathways tied to performance results.
Discipline Standards and Governance

• Define, publish, and enforce the standards of practice for Product Ownership, including Definition of Ready, backlog hygiene, prioritization rigor, stakeholder engagement, and release communication.
• Audit backlogs and Product Owner artifacts on a defined cadence; identify deviations from standard and require corrective action within agreed timeframes.
• Govern adoption of Lean Delivery principles, business capability alignment, and prioritization frameworks (for example, RICE, WSJF, ETUL) across all product teams.
• Maintain the Product Ownership playbook, templates, and tooling; require their use and verify compliance.

Outcome: Standards are not optional; the discipline operates predictably, with auditable artifacts and verifiable adherence across teams.
Delivery Outcomes and Risk Ownership

• Hold the Product Owner discipline accountable for predictable delivery against committed roadmaps, capability outcomes, and OKRs.
• Identify delivery risk originating from Product Owner practice (unclear scope, weak prioritization, stakeholder misalignment, refinement debt) and drive resolution; escalate unresolved risks to leadership with recommended actions.
• Review release readiness from a Product Ownership perspective and approve or block based on standards.
• Track and report discipline level metrics (backlog health, scope volatility, refinement throughput, stakeholder satisfaction, value delivered) to the Chief Product Officer and Section Chief.

Outcome: Delivery risk introduced by Product Ownership practice is surfaced early, owned, and resolved; leadership has reliable visibility into discipline performance.
Coaching and Development in Service of Performance

• Deliver targeted coaching, training, and structured development experiences that directly address measured performance gaps.
• Build and lead the Product Owner community of practice; require participation and measure its effect on performance, not on attendance.
• Develop and grow Product Owners toward higher levels of responsibility, including succession planning for senior and lead Product Owner roles.

Outcome: Coaching investments produce measurable improvement in performance and progression; development is treated as a performance lever, not as the goal.
Qualifications List

• Minimum 8 years in Agile product management roles within large scale or regulated organizations, including at least 4 years with documented accountability for the performance and output of multiple Product Owners or product teams (whether through direct supervision, matrixed leadership, or functional management).
• Demonstrated track record of holding people accountable to measurable standards without formal supervisory authority, including examples of performance interventions, removals, or escalations that produced documented outcomes.
• Deep experience operating Product Ownership at scale, including governance of standards, audit of practice, and reporting on discipline performance to executive leadership.
• Strong knowledge of Agile frameworks (Scrum, SAFe, Kanban) and Lean Product Development principles, with the ability to translate them into enforceable standards rather than aspirational guidance.
• Experience defining and operating performance management frameworks, competency models, and leveling criteria for a product or delivery discipline.
• Experience partnering with civil service, HR, or shared people management functions to convert functional performance findings into formal personnel actions.
• Public sector, healthcare, or other regulated industry experience strongly preferred.

Skills

• Performance management and accountability: ability to set measurable standards, evaluate work product against them, and intervene when standards are not met.
• Decisiveness and willingness to give and document difficult feedback, including written performance findings that hold up in formal personnel processes.
• Functional leadership and influence without authority, paired with the judgment to know when influence is insufficient and escalation is required.
• Strategic and systems thinking, with the ability to connect Product Owner practice to portfolio outcomes, OKRs, and capability delivery.
• Strong facilitation, written communication, and executive presence, including the ability to deliver hard messages to management and Product Owners alike.
• Analytical and diagnostic skill: ability to read backlogs, refinement patterns, and delivery metrics and identify the underlying performance issue.
• Coaching and mentoring skill, applied as a deliberate intervention tied to identified performance gaps.

Technologies/Tools

• Agile delivery and portfolio tooling (Jira, Jira Align, Confluence) at an advanced practitioner level, including the ability to configure dashboards and reports used to evaluate Product Owner performance.
• Backlog and delivery analytics: cycle time, throughput, scope volatility, refinement cadence, and predictability metrics.
• Performance, competency, and assessment frameworks (for example, structured competency rubrics, calibration models).

Speridian Technology is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Reasonable accommodations are available for qualified individuals with disabilities during the application process.