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Technical Product / Program Manager

The Arena

Posted today

Job Requirements

Washing, DC
Top Secret/SCI Polygraph not specified
Mid Level Career (5+ yrs experience)
$150,000 - $205,000

Job Description

Technical Product / Program Manager

Location: Onsite | Washington, DC
Work Authorization: U.S. Citizen
Clearance: Active TS/SCI
Employment Type: Full time, salaried, with full benefits

The Company & Mission:

Join a mission-driven defense technology company at the forefront of maritime domain awareness and national security innovation. This team is building next generation platforms that combine artificial intelligence, advanced sensor systems, and real time data processing to support critical U.S. defense operations.

The organization operates with a flat structure, empowering team members to work directly with leadership and take full ownership of high impact work. You’ll sit on the Services team, the company’s applied engineering and technical advisory arm, which embeds with government customers to design, build, and operate the AI pipelines, data infrastructure, and software that take emerging capability from concept to fielded mission impact.

This is an opportunity to work on real world systems that directly impact warfighter capabilities, alongside ML, data, software, and cloud engineers and operators who know how the Intelligence Community and DoW actually work day to day.

What This Role is All About:

As a Technical Product / Program Manager, you’ll own a specific AI or software product from start to finish: from mission requirement to delivered, adopted capability. You’ll work directly with engineers and government stakeholders to set priorities, scope the work, and keep capability moving.

This is a PM role first. You won’t write production code, but you need to understand the code, the architecture, and the trade offs well enough to make the call yourself, aligned to commander’s intent, without escalating or pulling in outside technical help. Priorities shift fast here and the ownership is real.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Own the roadmap, backlog, and delivery for an assigned product or capability line
• Translate mission and operational requirements into clear, scoped engineering work
• Make independent technical and programmatic trade off decisions aligned to commander’s intent
• Review pull requests and technical designs closely enough to confirm the work matches what was asked
• Scope work, challenge estimates, and surface technical risk early
• Build a quick prototype or script when that’s the fastest way to answer a product question
• Serve as the primary point of contact for government stakeholders on your product, and report schedule, risk, and dependencies to leadership and the customer
• Drive adoption and feedback loops with mission users
• Support accreditation, deployment, and transition in classified environments

What You Bring:

• Active TS/SCI required; must be able to obtain a CI Polygraph
• 4+ years of product, program, or project management on software efforts, with decisions and outcomes you can speak to directly
• A track record of sound trade off decisions made independently in ambiguous environments
• Working understanding of system architecture, APIs, data flows, cloud services, and deployment basics
• Clear communication with both engineers and non technical government stakeholders
• Agile delivery practice and tooling (Jira, GitLab, or similar)
• Demonstrated ability to learn new AI platforms, frameworks, and integrations quickly, including agentic AI tooling

Bonus Points:

• Active CI Polygraph
• Reads code in at least one modern language (Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Go) and can follow a pull request
• Prior experience as a software engineer before moving into product or program management
• Experience managing AI/ML or LLM based products
• Delivering software in classified environments, including RMF/ATO
• Military or Intelligence Community experience
• PMP, CSPO, CSM, or equivalent
• AWS Bedrock or Microsoft Azure AI Foundry experience
• Palantir Foundry, Gotham, AIP, or Maven Smart System (MSS)
• Agentic AI frameworks: LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, MCP

Benefits:

• 401(k) with company match
• Unlimited paid time off (PTO)
• Dedicated sick time
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 11 paid holidays
• Life insurance and disability coverage
• Referral and performance bonuses
• Professional development and certification reimbursement (position dependent)
• Technology stipend for home office setup
• Relocation assistance (position dependent)
• Mission-driven work with direct real world national security impact
group id: 91164143

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Job Category
Intelligence
Clearance Level
Top Secret/SCI
Employer
The Arena