Staff/Principal Engagement Manager (ACF)

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services.

We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists.

The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, engagement managers are responsible for driving the overall success of our client work. They draw on their expertise in areas such as  product management practices, risk/issue management, stakeholder management, continual improvement, and contract administration in order to deliver the highest levels of client service and work.

At Skylight, engagement managers are responsible for driving the overall success of our client work. They draw on their expertise in areas such as product management practices, risk/issue management, stakeholder management, continual improvement, and contract administration in order to deliver the highest levels of client service and work.

In this role, the engagement manager will lead the delivery of a net-new, 0–1 product in the child welfare space, guiding a cross-functional team from early ambiguity through to tangible outcomes on an accelerated timeline. They will be responsible for establishing clarity where little exists—defining priorities, shaping the product direction in close partnership with stakeholders, and ensuring the team can move quickly while staying grounded in user needs and policy constraints. This includes setting up pragmatic product management practices, enabling rapid iteration, and making thoughtful tradeoffs to balance speed, quality, and impact.

They will also serve as the primary point of accountability for navigating complexity and risk, proactively identifying potential issues and addressing them before they impact delivery. Given the sensitive and high-stakes nature of the domain, the engagement manager will need to operate with sound judgment, ensuring that decisions are both responsible and action-oriented. At the same time, they will build and maintain strong relationships with senior stakeholders, translating ambiguity into clear plans, aligning on expectations, and communicating progress with transparency and confidence.

Success in this role requires the ability to lead teams through uncertainty while maintaining momentum, fostering a culture of ownership, adaptability, and continuous improvement. The engagement manager will ensure that the engagement remains operationally sound—managing timelines, scope, and contract expectations—while empowering the team to deliver meaningful, human-centered outcomes in a space where the work directly impacts children and families.

What you’ll do

• Lead a cross-functional team (product, design, engineering, etc.) to deliver a 0–1 product from ambiguity to launch on an accelerated timeline
• Guide the team in shaping product vision, priorities, and roadmap in close partnership with senior stakeholders
• Enable the team to translate complex policy, operational, and user needs into actionable product decisions and deliverables
• Drive alignment and decision-making across senior stakeholders, ensuring clarity on goals, tradeoffs, and progress
• Proactively identify and mitigate risks, empowering the team to navigate constraints without losing momentum
• Establish and reinforce lightweight product and delivery practices that support speed, quality, and continuous learning
• Ensure the team is incorporating user feedback and real-world insights throughout the product development process
• Hold the team accountable to outcomes, timelines, and quality, making clear tradeoffs to maintain forward progress
• Foster a strong, collaborative team culture grounded in ownership, adaptability, and mission-driven work
• Oversee contract execution, ensuring delivery aligns with scope, milestones, and client expectations
• Communicate engagement status, risks, and outcomes clearly to both client and internal leadership
• Serve as a team-oriented, collaborative leader with both client and internal leadership, contribute to performance management and talent retention strategies, to include staff hiring, onboarding, development and growth
• Translate the client’s objectives and constraints into an engagement approach that will deliver a unique experience and impactful results in the shortest amount of time possible
• Set up the team for successful delivery by removing obstacles, coaching them on how to become more collaborative and self-organizing, and enabling the work they do rather than impose how it’s done
• Provide management- and team-level visibility into the status and health of the engagement and serve as primary coordinator for budget, travel, and other administrative requirements
• Manage contract financials and health

What we're looking for

Minimum qualifications

• Experience leading teams in 0–1 product development, from concept through initial launch, for a complex project or program, preferably in a product management, delivery, or consulting capacity
• Experience directly managing and coaching cross-functional teams (product, design, engineering)
• Demonstrated ability to deliver under tight timelines while maintaining quality and team health
• Strong judgment and decision-making skills in high-ambiguity, high-stakes environments
• Experience facilitating executive-level decision-making and navigating stakeholder conflict, building alignment in complex, multi-layered environments
• Experience managing subcontractors or partner organizations within a delivery team
• Financial acumen, including managing budgets, burn rates, and forecasting within a contract
• Strong ability to turn ambiguous, evolving requirements into clear plans, priorities, and actionable work for teams and stakeholders
• Experience working at the intersection of policy, operations, and technology, with the ability to translate between non-technical and technical audiences
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams or client engagements while maintaining high-quality, outcome-driven delivery
• Ability to identify and remove blockers across policy, operational, and technical domains to keep teams moving forward
• Comfort working with technical systems, data flows, and legacy environments, with enough fluency to collaborate effectively with engineering and data teams
• Experience working in or with government or other highly regulated environments, or the ability to quickly navigate complex regulatory contexts
• Ability to build trusted relationships with clients and partners, and communicate effectively in a professional services environment
• Commitment to agile and iterative delivery approaches, especially continuous improvement, facilitating retrospectives and applying learnings to improve team performance and outcomes
• Ability to travel for work from time to time
• Passion for improving public outcomes through better government services
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with Skylight's core values

Nice-to-have qualifications

• Experience working in the child welfare or broader human services domain
• Experience launching products in highly regulated or policy-constrained environments
• Background in consulting or professional services, particularly in client-facing delivery roles
• Experience with human-centered, trauma-informed design practices and working closely with design teams
• Familiarity with data-informed product development, including defining metrics and using data to guide decisions
• Experience working on digital services that serve vulnerable or historically underserved populations
• Experience working on digital services that serve youth and young adults, with youth and young adults
• Experience scaling early-stage products or transitioning from 0–1 to more mature product phases
• Prior experience working in the civic tech space

Don’t meet 100% of the criteria but think you can do the job? We’d love to chat anyway! We’re on a mission to build diverse teams, and studies have shown that women and marginalized folks are less likely to apply to jobs if they don’t check every box.

Other requirements

• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. Some federal contracts require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment.
• You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship.
• As a government contractor, this role requires you obtain a public trust or security clearance upon hire.
• You may be required to complete a company background check successfully.
• Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.
• You must be willing to be in-person between 1-5 days a week, depending on project phase, at 330 C Street SW, Washington DC.

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This role is on-site in Washington, DC. Candidates, between 1-5 days a week, depending on project needs. A relocation incentive of up to $10,000 is available.

Care package

Salary

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For an Engagement Manager at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

• Associate Engagement Manager: $90,000–$125,000
• Engagement Manager I: $120,000–$140,000
• Engagement Manager II: $135,000–$160,000
• Senior Engagement Manager: $150,000–$185,000
• Staff Engagement Manager: $170,000–$203,000
• Principal Engagement Manager: $180,000–$230,000

Benefits

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways:

• Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
• Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays
• Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents
• Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options
• Business development / sales bonuses
• Referral bonuses
• Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development
• Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases
• Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)
• Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year
• Flexible, remote-friendly work environment
• An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good

Interview tips

• Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works.
• Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them.
• If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at recruiting@skylight.digital.

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.