Principal Product Manager, Operational Management
Speridian TechnologiesThis is a remote role, however, there will be meetings in the Sacramento area several times a year. Candidates are expected to work business hours, Monday-Friday Pacific time zone. All candidates must be based in and work from the US.
Join DHCS’s Behavioral Health Transformation: Where Purpose Meets Innovation
Location: Remote/Hybrid
Department: Department of Healthcare Services (DHCS)
Commitment: Full-Time Consultant (W2 employee of Speridian or 1099/IC for Speridian)
California’s Department of Health Care Services ( ) is transforming how behavioral health care is delivered across the state. The Behavioral Health Transformation (BHT) project represents a historic investment in systems change. Our work enables counties, providers, and state staff to deliver more coordinated, equitable, and outcomes-driven behavioral health services for all Californians. BHT is a once-in-a-generation effort to transform behavioral health service delivery for California's most vulnerable populations. We are building a team of mission-driven, systems-minded professionals who can steward this transformation.
We are hiring a Principal Product Manager for Operational Management to lead one of the most critical and horizontal product domains in the BHT project. Operational Management provides the connective tissue across the BHT. It ensures new training, policies, processes, and systems are embedded into a coherent, sustainable operating model for DHCS. This role is responsible for developing internal products that help DHCS staff understand, implement, and sustain behavioral health reforms over time. Success in this role means transforming DHCS' ability to cross-train and retain institutional knowledge about the behavioral health system.
This is not a back-office product role. Your work will directly influence how state employees, counties, and providers experience DHCS administrative processes, receive support, and deliver services. This is a deeply strategic and horizontal space, requiring systems thinking, empathy for internal users, and exceptional product management judgment. Operational Management is where policy becomes practice. As Principal Product Manager, your work will determine whether the BHT transformation is sustainable and scalable across California’s behavioral health system. You’ll ensure DHCS doesn’t just build new software—but builds an organization ready to use it.
What You'll Do
Own the vision and roadmap for internal DHCS products that support operational excellence in BHT.
Identify and prioritize problems to solve, balancing immediate needs (e.g., process clarity, onboarding support) with longer-term strategic bets (e.g., AI-assisted knowledge and tools).
Collaborate cross-functionally with policy, program, IT, and external partner teams to understand how new policies, systems, and practices must fit together into an integrated operating model.
Drive user research and usability testing with internal DHCS staff to ensure products are accessible, useful, and aligned to real-world operating needs.
Define product success using clear, outcome-oriented metrics tied to improvements in staff knowledge, process adoption, system usage, and support burden reduction.
Translate policy and training requirements into concrete product functionality, collaborating with technical teams to implement and iterate on internal-facing platforms.
Build feedback loops across systems and roles to continuously improve how DHCS maintains and evolves institutional knowledge and operational performance.
Mission-driven. You’re looking for the opportunity to provide massive impact and are excited about the possibility of transforming how government manages existing and future service delivery processes.
Experienced principal product manager. You have 6–10+ years of product management experience, including leading complex or cross-cutting internal platforms, knowledge systems, or operations-facing tools.
A systems thinker. You can see how disparate products, policies, and processes connect—and know how to design solutions that align them.
User obsessed. You meet your customers where they are and cater to their needs. You believe great internal tools are intuitive, useful, and support real-world job performance—and you design with that in mind.
Outcome-oriented. You measure success based on meaningful behavioral or operational changes, not just shipping features or documentation.
A collaborative leader. You work well across policy, IT, operations, and program teams—even when goals are not fully aligned at the start.
Technically curious. You don’t need to code, but you’re comfortable working with engineering teams and exploring concepts like workflow automation, service design, and knowledge graphs.
Operationally minded. You understand maturing the operations of a large organization takes more than just new tools, it requires upleveling people, and processes and you’re able to balance all three to succeed.
Preferred QualificationsExperience solving human operational challenges with AI and machine-learning.
Experience with government operations, public sector transformation, or behavioral health policy implementation.
Familiarity with service design, training platforms, or internal support systems (e.g., knowledge bases, ticketing systems, process orchestration tools).
Exposure to AI-powered knowledge management or structured content systems (e.g., ontologies, taxonomies, knowledge graphs).
Speridian is an Equal Opportunity Employer