Forward Deployed Product Manager

FORWARD DEPLOYED PRODUCT MANAGER

Location: 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

ABOUT SPRUCE

Our mission is to let users control their data across the web. We build privacy-preserving, standards-based digital identity and credentialing systems that help governments and institutions increase access to important services and benefits programs while reducing fraud. We believe the right approach to product management is critical to combining high standards of usability, security, and privacy into a seamless user experience and driving broad adoption.

THE ROLE

We 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.

You will support specific deployments, from statewide identity programs to large-scale education and workforce credentialing initiatives. Each must be localized to its own ecosystem: stakeholders, user demographics, regulations, and program objectives. Even as we sell a product to a customer, we treat the overall program as a product with its own governance, roadmap, and objectives. Much of this work is customer-driven today and requires hands-on engagement with individual implementations, even as we work to consolidate what we learn into reusable Spruce products. Holding both at once is the job.

A credential is only useful if someone issues it, someone accepts it, and someone carries it. So beyond discovery, you own adoption for your program: getting issuers to issue, verifiers to verify, and end users to adopt, with startup-style resourcefulness and measurable KPIs. In some cases, you will source and build the first pilot group yourself.

The surface area is broad, and you should be good at taming unknowns and complexity. 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, how those pieces fit together, and ultimately outcomes for our customers’ customers.

This 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 matter. Knowing what can be iterated on quickly and what absolutely cannot is central to doing this job well.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

• CUSTOMER-EMBEDDED DISCOVERY

• Work directly with state government partners through discovery, architecture, and design

• Understand their users, policy environment, constraints, and workflows first-hand

• Look past stated requirements to the underlying problem the customer is actually trying to solve

• Navigate government relationships thoughtfully: introduce user evidence that may challenge stated priorities, and influence direction without damaging the relationship

• END-TO-END PRODUCT OWNERSHIP

• Hold the full product picture across user-facing experiences and the APIs and services beneath them, often across several interconnected initiatives at once

• Help partners shape and sequence their roadmap, and make sure what gets built solves the real problem

• Partner closely with engineering, design, and delivery leads from definition through deployment

• HANDS-ON USER RESEARCH

• Personally design and run research: talk to stakeholders and end users directly, run discovery, prototype where appropriate

• Synthesize what you learn into product decisions and roadmap direction

• Bring user evidence into conversations where requirements are often treated as fixed

There is no research team or technical product manager counterpart behind this role. You do this work yourself, whether that means digging into agency rules, legislation, user interviews, or codebases.

• ECOSYSTEM BUILDING AND ADOPTION

• Drive adoption of digital credentials across your program’s ecosystem: onboard issuers, verifiers, and institutional partners with startup GTM resourcefulness

• Find high-leverage partnerships (university research programs, workforce boards, employer networks) that multiply impact beyond your own direct effort

• Own adoption KPIs and find creative, resourceful ways to move them

• JUDGMENT ABOUT PACE VERSUS RISK

• Put work in front of small pilot groups early and let findings redirect the roadmap

• Draw clear lines around what cannot be iterated on loosely: security, accessibility, and reliability

• Make and defend those calls with engineering and with customers

Where this role ends. This is a forward-deployed role, not a core product role: you own outcomes for your engagements, not Spruce’s product-line roadmap. But you are the person closest to the field, so we expect you to notice when a problem extends beyond a single agency and flag what should become reusable Spruce capability.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 6–10+ years of product experience at startups or on new product initiatives. Former founder or founding-team operator is the ideal profile

• Zero-to-one experience: you have taken a product from nothing to shipped, or identified and pursued entirely new opportunities

• Meaningful experience in education, workforce development, or adjacent sectors

• A real interest in workforce development and expanding opportunity through technology

• Experience in government or another highly regulated environment

• Customer-embedded experience: forward-deployed product, solutions PM, implementation, or founder-led delivery all count

• Hands-on user research: you have designed and run discovery yourself and turned it into product decisions

• Enough technical depth to read a codebase, hold your own with engineers on APIs, services, and system design, and make tradeoffs they respect. You do not need to be an engineer

• Credible at the executive level: comfortable holding a room with agency directors, university chancellors, and institutional partners

• Based in the U.S. and excited to engage directly with state government partners

NICE TO HAVE

• Background in digital identity, IAM/ICAM, credentialing, or authentication systems

• Experience building or growing multi-sided ecosystems, marketplaces, or platform adoption

• Background in education technology or learning and employment records

• Familiarity with accessibility standards, FedRAMP, or NIST frameworks

• Experience navigating public sector procurement and contracting

• Prior engineering or deeply technical systems experience

WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS

• Shape identity and credentialing systems that millions of residents will actually use

• Work directly with senior government stakeholders on mission-critical infrastructure

• Operate at the intersection of policy, engineering, research, and real-world delivery

• Help build the education and workforce credential ecosystems that connect people to opportunity

• Help turn individual state deployments into durable product capability

• Join a small, high-trust team where autonomy and judgment matter

At the company, we value diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or veteran status.