Digital Product Lead (1099)

Job Title: Digital Product Lead (1099)
Location: 100% Remote - anywhere in the Continental U.S.
Rate: $110/hr
Hours: Approximately 36 hours/week, consistent across a 9-month engagement.
Note: This is a 1099 position.

About Us

Friends From The City is a design, research, and engineering company focused on public impact. Our mission is to make digital interactions with government simple, intuitive, and accessible. That means removing barriers like confusing user flows, inaccessible content, and language limitations that prevent people from getting what they need.

We build digital products using accessible design, rigorous research, and reliable code.

About the Role

The Digital Product Lead will guide the strategy, design, and delivery of modern public health digital services. This role serves as the bridge between program stakeholders, end users, designers, researchers, and technical teams—turning complex health and operational requirements into clear product priorities and usable digital experiences. The ideal candidate understands how to lead iterative product development in a government or regulated environment and can balance user needs, public health objectives, accessibility, data requirements, technical constraints, and long-term platform sustainability.

Requirements

What you’ll achieve:In this role, you will lead multidisciplinary teams in translating complex public health programs and workflows into effective, user-centered digital products.

You will:

• Own and communicate the product vision, roadmap, priorities, and measurable outcomes
• Translate public health, policy, operational, and user needs into actionable product requirements
• Lead discovery, prototyping, testing, and iterative product delivery
• Work closely with UX researchers and designers to create accessible, customer-centered experiences
• Partner with architects and engineers on technically feasible and scalable product decisions
• Define acceptance criteria and prioritize features, defects, technical work, and usability improvements
• Use analytics, research findings, support data, and other evidence to guide product decisions
• Coordinate stakeholders across program, technical, security, privacy, data, and operational teams
• Guide products through governance, release, adoption, and continuous improvement
• Ensure product decisions support Section 508 accessibility, privacy, security, and applicable government requirements

Skills You’ll Need to Bring:We are looking for a product leader who can operate at the intersection of digital delivery and health/public-sector programs.

• 5+ years of experience in digital product management, product ownership, service design, or related digital delivery roles
• Experience leading cross-functional teams of engineers, designers, researchers, analysts, and subject-matter experts
• Experience with Health IT, public health systems, healthcare technology, or equivalent complex regulated digital services
• Strong understanding of user-centered and human-centered design practices
• Experience translating complex business or program requirements into product capabilities, user stories, and acceptance criteria
• Experience managing product roadmaps, backlogs, releases, dependencies, and competing priorities
• Experience using qualitative and quantitative evidence to make product decisions
• Ability to communicate technical concepts and tradeoffs to nontechnical stakeholders
• Understanding of accessibility, privacy, security, and data considerations in digital product delivery
• Experience working iteratively with prototypes and production software rather than relying solely on static requirements

Nice To Haves:These are not required, but we would love to know if you have:

• Experience with CDC, HHS, or other federal health programs
• Experience with public health surveillance, safety reporting, case reporting, clinical workflows, or health data collection
• Familiarity with health interoperability standards such as FHIR, HL7, or related healthcare data standards
• Experience modernizing legacy government systems or forms
• Familiarity with USWDS and Section 508/WCAG accessibility requirements
• Experience with configurable platforms, content governance, or CMS-driven digital products
• Experience with product analytics, experimentation, usability testing, and service-performance measurement
• Familiarity with Agile/Lean delivery …