This 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.
Join DHCS’s Behavioral Health Transformation: Where Purpose Meets Innovation
Location: Remote
Department: Department of Healthcare Services (DHCS), Behavioral Health Transformation (BHT)
Commitment: Full-Time Consultant (W2 employee of Speridian or 1099/IC for Speridian)
Why DHCS?
At DHCS we are leading a transformative journey in Behavioral Health, reshaping systems and services to ensure better outcomes for communities across California. Our Behavioral Health transformation initiative is more than a project—it’s a movement to make California a leader in accessible, high-quality health services. We’re setting the stage for a new era of government services built on agile methodologies, cutting-edge technology, continuous improvement, and a relentless commitment to serving the public good.
At DHCS, we’re looking for innovators who are passionate about purposeful work and excited by the opportunity to drive lasting change through innovative solutions.
Our core values are what make us successful and define the impact we have on the DHCS program and California’s citizens.
- Partnership: Respect Other, Practice Empathy, Earn Trust
- Ownership: Take Accountability, Show Reliability, Act with Integrity
- Grit: Bring Passion, Exhibit Perseverance, Demonstrate Resilience
- Value: Drive Outcomes, Maximize Impact, Keep Improving
The Product Owner for AI/ML & Agentic Systems leads the development and delivery of intelligent, autonomous, and scalable AI solutions that power next-generation digital services. This role is pivotal in shaping how AI agents, large language models (LLMs), and machine learning systems are integrated into DHCS workflows to drive measurable outcomes.
As part of a cross-functional AI team, including Product Managers, human-centered design (HCD), engineers, policy experts, and county stakeholders, the Product Owner will translate strategic goals and user needs into actionable backlogs, orchestrate the delivery of AI-powered features, and ensure alignment with ethical AI principles, data governance, and enterprise architecture standards.
This role requires deep experience in AI/ML product delivery, a strong grasp of various AI paradigms, and the ability to guide teams through the complexities of building and deploying intelligent systems in real-world environments.Responsibilities
Lead with full accountability for the teams'' backlog in this area. This includes not only maintaining the backlog but owning its strategic direction and ensuring it reflects the evolving priorities of the Behavioral Health Transformation (BHT) initiative.
Backlog Ownership & Prioritization
Own and manage the AI/ML product backlog, including GenAI and Agentic AI use cases.
Translate business problems into AI opportunities and actionable user stories with clear acceptance criteria tied to measurable outcome.
Prioritize backlog items to align with BHT objectives, compliance deadlines, and user value, while balancing short-term delivery needs with long-term platform scalability.
Ensure features align with business value, model performance, ethical risk, and technical feasibility.
Facilitate backlog grooming, refinement and planning sessions with cross-functional teams.
Ensure clarity, feasibility, and alignment across engineering, HCD, and policy stakeholders.
Act as the primary link between legal, policy, technical, and user domains. Translate complex requirements into actionable epics, features, and user stories with clear acceptance criteria and measurable outcomes.
Proactively manage delivery risks, identify cross-team dependencies, and ensure the team is consistently focused on the highest-value work.
Serve as the authoritative voice on what gets built, when, and why. Own the product narrative from Product Management and delivery outcomes from discovery through deployment.
Strategic Alignment & Delivery
Active Partnership with Product Manager to define and evolve the product roadmap for AI/ML capabilities, retrieval augmentation, autonomous agents, generative and predictive models.
Collaborate with Product Managers to define and track objectives and key results (OKRs)
Align delivery with capability OKRs, AI governance frameworks, and responsible AI principles.
Partner with AI/ML engineering leads to ensure model lifecycle management, from experimentation to deployment and monitoring.
Ensure delivery timelines align with BHT milestones and federal interoperability requirements.
Partner with Agile Delivery Managers to manage sprint cadence, burn rate, and resource allocation.
AI/ML Platform & Solution Development
Guide the development of AI-powered features such as:
Agentic workflows for autonomous task execution
Natural language interfaces and copilots
Predictive analytics and decision support tools
Retrieval-augmented & Generative workflows
AI-enhanced data pipelines and feedback loops
Ensure solutions are scalable, explainable, and aligned with DHCS/BHT architecture and data privacy standards.
Collaborate with MDE teams to support continuous integration and delivery of AI models.
Stakeholder & Policy Integration
Review discovery workshops, designs and interviews from the Operational Capability area to identify high-impact AI use cases align with Epics, stories and acceptance criteria.
Serve as the bridge between business stakeholders and technical teams.
Ensure AI solutions are human-centered, accessible, and aligned with user intent and workflows.
Champion the voice of the user in AI product decisions, especially in high-stakes or regulated workflows.
Facilitate feedback loops from frontline users and route feature requests appropriately.
Metrics & Continuous Improvement
Define and track success metrics.
Use analytics to drive backlog prioritization and product enhancements.
Lead discovery and prototyping efforts to validate new features.
Promote a culture of continuous learning, iteration, and user-centered design.
Collaboration & Leadership
Lead agile ceremonies and foster cross-functional collaboration across engineering, HCD, policy, and delivery teams.
Champion the voice of care workers, program and county users in product decisions.
Act as a thought leader in AI/ML product strategy, agentic system design, and responsible innovation in collaboration with engineering partners
Evangelize AI capabilities across the organization and support change management efforts.
Stay current on emerging AI trends, tools, and regulatory developments.
DHCS is recruiting for skills that reflect the broader leadership, systems thinking, and cross-functional coordination required for this role, especially given the legal sensitivity and statewide scope of an AIL/ML platform or application.
Experience
7+ years in product ownership or technical product management, with 3+ years focused on AI/ML or data science products.
Proven experience delivering AI/ML solutions in production, including LLMs, GenAI, or autonomous agents.
Experience working with cross-functional teams including data scientists, ML engineers, and UX researchers.
Familiarity with MLOps, model governance, and AI observability tools.
Experience in regulated industries (e.g., healthcare, finance, public sector) is a plus.
Skills
Ability to assess and manage product risk across legal, technical, and operational domains
Proficient in managing Agile workflows using Atlassian tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket for backlog management, documentation, and collaboration.
Experience with AWS AI/ML services, including SageMaker, Bedrock, Comprehend, Rekognition, and Lex, as well as integration with AWS data pipelines and security frameworks.
Skill in navigating ambiguity and making decisions with incomplete information
Ability to synthesize user research, policy analysis, and technical constraints into cohesive product direction
Familiarity with data governance principles and consent lifecycle management
Experience coordinating go-to-market strategies for public-facing or field-deployed applications
Ability to assess and manage product risk across legal, technical, and operational domains
Skill in navigating ambiguity and making decisions with incomplete information
Ability to synthesize user research, policy analysis, and technical constraints into cohesive product direction
Comfort working with executive stakeholders and presenting complex topics in plain language
Experience with prompt engineering, or agent orchestration frameworks.
Knowledge of ethical AI principles, bias mitigation, and explainability techniques.
Certification in Agile Product Ownership.
Background in data science, computer science, or a related technical field.
Speridian is an Equal Opportunity Employer
Top Skills
What We Do
Speridian is an innovative, thought-leading digital modernization company that leverages modern software engineering and proprietary platform solutions to streamline and enhance interactions between clients and constituents within commercial and public sector markets.
As a global business and technology solutions provider, Speridian's business and technology experts help clients modernize their businesses through Digital Transformation. Headquartered in Albuquerque, NM, with regional offices in the Americas, Middle East, Singapore, India, Pakistan, and Philippines; Speridian has been at the forefront of CRM, ERP, HR, CX innovation since 2003.
Our Next-Gen Solutions Practice combined with our partnerships with leading innovators such as Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce, Google, Amazon, UiPath, Adobe, SAP etc has led to our proven track record of solving the most pressing business problems with our unique, industry-based 3-pillar approach: (1) business focus, 2) technology-fuelled innovation, and 3) delivery excellence.
Speridian’s services include consulting, testing and quality assurance, custom development, cloud computing, IT support and managed services, AI and machine learning, system integration, big data and analytics, customer experience solutions, application modernization, and staffing professional services.
Based on the rich domain expertise that Speridian acquired over the years, Speridian developed several advanced platforms, enhancing their service offerings:
CaseXellence, a low-code intelligent process automation platform, is designed for public sector enterprises. It modernizes legacy infrastructure and includes pre-built solutions focused on security, transparency, and traceability.
Beacon, another of Speridian’s innovations, is a comprehensive suite of banking solutions. It offers a range of products including Core Banking, Loan Management, and Banking Analytics, catering to over 200 financial institutions.
Finally, Speridian O360 is an Enterprise management platform providing a 360-degree view of core HR and Project Management processes. Tailored for small to medium-sized organizations, it aims to boost productivity by automating manual tasks, allowing HR to focus on strategic and critical business tasks.
