Forward Deployed Product Manager

Spruce is seeking a Forward Deployed Product Manager to sit alongside government customers during discovery, architecture, and design, helping them determine what they need and why. The role supports specific deployments, from statewide identity programs to large-scale education and workforce credentialing initiatives, and owns adoption for each program. The position is a forward-deployed role, not a core product role, and involves substantial travel to state government partner sites depending on the assigned engagement.

Responsibilities

Work directly with state government partners through discovery, architecture, and design; Understand users, policy environment, constraints, and workflows first-hand; Hold the end-to-end product picture across user-facing experiences and the APIs and services beneath them; Help partners shape and sequence their roadmap; Partner closely with engineering, design, and delivery leads; Personally design and run user research and synthesize findings into product decisions; Drive adoption of digital credentials by onboarding issuers, verifiers, and institutional partners; Find high-leverage partnerships such as university research programs, workforce boards, and employer networks; Own adoption KPIs; Put work in front of small pilot groups early and let findings redirect the roadmap; Draw clear lines around security, accessibility, and reliability; Flag problems that should become reusable Spruce capability

Requirements

6–10+ years of product experience at startups or on new product initiatives; Zero-to-one experience taking a product from nothing to shipped, or identifying and pursuing 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); Hands-on user research experience, having designed and run discovery 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; Credible at the executive level, comfortable with agency directors, university chancellors, and institutional partners; Based in the U.S. and excited to engage directly with state government partners; Must be eligible and able to pass a government background check

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