Director, Product Strategy & Policy Design CalSAWS

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Are you a strategic product leader who thrives at the intersection of policy, technology, and large-scale public service delivery? Can you translate complex state and federal policy intent into clear roadmap priorities, actionable requirements, and measurable outcomes? Are you ready to help shape the future direction of CalSAWS core systems serving all 58 California counties?

If so, CalSAWS invites you to apply today to join our team as the next Director, Product Strategy & Policy Design!

The Director, Product Strategy and Policy Design leads CalSAWS core product strategy by proactively identifying and shaping county business needs into a coherent, multi-horizon roadmap. This role strengthens upstream discipline across discovery, roadmap shaping, and Business Change Request (BCR) readiness to ensure delivery is predictable, outcomes-focused, and aligned to enterprise governance.

This position owns the overall functionality of CalSAWS core delivery upstream, including discovery, roadmap themes, and policy intent translated into acceptance criteria, while partnering closely with executive leadership, counties, vendors, and governance bodies.

Key areas of responsibility include:

• Owning the CalSAWS core County Business Needs Roadmap (Now/Next/Later) and leading a quarterly roadmap cycle of listening, synthesis, sequencing, and decision readiness
• Establishing and maintaining CalSAWS core Product Domains with clear outcome ownership (e.g., Core Eligibility and Rules, Integrations, Reporting and Analytics, Platform Enablement)
• Leading BCR top-of-funnel discipline for CalSAWS core, including problem statements, outcomes framing, sizing assumptions, and scope boundaries
• Translating state and federal policy changes into minimum compliance requirements and clear acceptance criteria
• Defining compliance-first versus enhancement phasing to support enterprise prioritization
• Owning early estimating and Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) discipline including the scope, constraints, effort resources, phasing, risks, and assumptions(SCERFRA) framework, documenting sizing ranges, assumptions, dependencies, and phasing
• Partnering with the appropriate executive members (e.g. CTO) and vendors to convert early estimates into baselined delivery plans and release-sized commitments
• Maintaining decision-ready roadmap options with explicit tradeoffs (value, urgency, operational impact, and dependencies) for executive forums
• Coordinating cross-product interlocks with the Benefits Cal Director when dependencies or shared policy interpretation require alignment
• Ensuring delivered outcomes align with policy intent, user-centered design practices, and operational needs

• Bring senior leadership experience in product strategy, business analysis, policy-to-technology translation, or large-scale program design
• Demonstrate the ability to govern multi-stakeholder roadmaps and prioritization frameworks
• Have strong expertise in requirements development and outcome-based acceptance criteria
• Excel in executive facilitation, strategic communication, and surfacing tradeoffs clearly
• Thrive in governance-heavy, compliance-sensitive environments
• Possess a general understanding of California’s welfare landscape and the county-administered delivery model
• Be motivated to shape enterprise-scale systems that support millions of Californians

All positions may be subject to some short‑term travel in order to conduct project business with the State and counties. The CalSAWS project office is currently located in Gold River, California.

• Publish CalSAWS core product domain map and establish domain cadences; define how domain insights feed the roadmap cycle.
• Deliver an initial CalSAWS core Now/Next/Later roadmap draft with top themes, proposed sequencing, and compliance/enhancement phasing.
• Implement a CalSAWS core BCR readiness checklist/template; pilot with at least 2 priority candidate items.
• Define and socialize the Benefits Cal interlock protocol (triggers, required artifacts, decision path) with Benefits Cal Director, PDO, and Release…