Principal Experience Owner & Product Manager

<p><strong>The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD)</strong> is responsible for overseeing and coordinating the Commonwealth’s workforce, labor, and economic mobility systems. EOLWD works in partnership with state agencies, regional workforce boards, education providers, employers, and community-based organizations to strengthen Massachusetts’ workforce, support workers and businesses, and expand access to economic opportunity. Its mission is to build a skilled, competitive workforce and a resilient economy by aligning policy, programs, and investments across the workforce system.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>The <strong>MassHire Department of Career Services (MDCS)</strong>, an agency within EOLWD, administers the Commonwealth’s statewide network of MassHire Career Centers. MDCS provides employment and training services to jobseekers and employers, including career counseling, job matching, training referrals, and labor market information. Working closely with 16 local workforce areas and a broad set of partners, MDCS plays a central role in delivering workforce services, ensuring compliance with federal and state requirements, and supporting equitable access to employment and career pathways across Massachusetts.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About the role:</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Are you interested in solving meaningful public problems and transforming how Massachusetts residents, jobseekers, employers, and workforce partners experience career and employment services? We are seeking an experienced, collaborative, and purpose-driven <strong>Principal Experience Owner and Product Manager</strong> to help lead a major workforce services and systems modernization and transformation initiative led by The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD) and The MassHire Department of Career Services (MDCS).</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>This role is central to the <strong>MassHire Innovation Project,</strong> a statewide transformation initiative to design and implement a modern, integrated workforce system that better serves jobseekers, employers, training providers, and career center staff across the Commonwealth. We are looking for a collaborative, people-centered strategic leader and change agent who can help shape and facilitate delivery of a holistic experience and experience-based and outcome-focused transformation roadmap that measurably improves end –to-end, digitally-enabled service experiences and outcomes for job seekers, employees, training providers, and career center staff.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>We need an empathic and creative system thinker who can synthesize complex constituent and business requirements, help define service/product solutions, facilitate alignment among diverse stakeholders, guide an iterative people-centered design and development process, and promote organizational adoption of an iterative people-centered design and development approach and best practices.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>Are you interested in solving meaningful public problems and transforming how Massachusetts residents, jobseekers, employers, and workforce partners experience career and employment services? Read on, this role may be for you.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>What you’ll do:</strong></p><p><br></p><p>As the <strong>Principal Experience Owner and Product Manager,</strong> you will define and iteratively improve the experience of jobseekers, employers, training providers, and workforce staff. You will collaborate with the program’s technical leadership and the experience design and research lead to translate the program's high-level strategy into an actionable roadmap that spans service design, process definition, technology implementation, and more. You will help lead and build a growing cross-functional, multi-vendor team in delivering against that roadmap.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><strong>You’ll focus on: </strong></p><ul><li>Define and facilitate stakeholder alignment on outcomes, objectives, priorities, and success metrics for key jobseeker, employer, training provider, and staff experiences.</li><li>Lead the definition, refinement, and alignment on a holistic people-centered service experience vision.</li><li>Develop an experience-based and outcome-focused roadmap to design and deliver digitally enabled end-to-end solutions and services to achieve key experiences and outcomes and progress towards the vision.</li><li>Lead and manage the execution of the roadmap to define, test, operationalize and launch new and improved end-to-end services experiences and associated digital solutions that address our constituents and stakeholders’ biggest pain points, reduce barriers, and improve outcomes.</li><li>Onboard and oversee individual internal experience/product managers and vendor product managers.</li><li>Leverage experience research, prototyping, and iterative people-centered service/product/experience design and development best practices to ensure that changes are driven by and effectively meet the needs of our constituents and staff.</li><li>Facilitate the learning and adoption of a people-centered, experience and service design mindset and problem-solving approach within EOLWD and MDCS.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>This position is a <strong>full-time contract opportunity</strong>. The work schedule for this position is <strong>Monday through Friday, 9:00AM to 5:00PM EST, </strong>in a flexible <strong>hybrid remote </strong>arrangement with 1 - 2 days per week spent at the primary work location: <strong>100 Cambridge, Boston, MA 02108. </strong>Applicants should be located within reasonable commuting distance from the primary work location.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities: </strong></p><ul><li>Five plus years of professional experience in product, service, or experience ownership/management.</li><li>Three plus years of experience as an experience owner/product manager in agile, collaborative product/service design and development environments.</li><li>Three plus years of experience in complex government environments or analogous service and organizational environments.</li><li>Enthusiastic about solving problems facing public-sector agencies and promoting equitable access to public services using modern technology, design, and research practices.</li><li>Expertise in all or most facets of people-centered experience/product management (problem/opportunity identification and prioritization, context/ecosystem/market analysis, stakeholder management, product/experience strategy, product/service planning and road-mapping, release planning and “backlog” management, product/service impact and adoption analysis, etc.).</li><li>Understanding of all facets of iterative people-centered service/product design, development, and delivery.</li><li>Outstanding facilitation, communication and consultation skills.</li><li>Outstanding planning and team management skills.</li><li>Extremely strong system thinking skills.</li><li>Outstanding stakeholder management, and organizational change and navigation skills.</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>An Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer. Females, minorities, veterans, and persons with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.</strong></p><p><br></p><p>The Commonwealth is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. Research suggests that qualified women, Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) may self-select out of opportunities if they don't meet 100% of the job requirements. We encourage individuals who believe they have the skills necessary to thrive to apply for this role.</p>

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