Technical Product Lead

Program: ED/IES Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), Phase IA
Engagement: Contract, part-time
Rate: $75 to $100 per hour, contingent on award
Position: Remote, U.S. only (U.S. citizen or permanent resident)

ApplyA structured application with a short work sample, about 30 to 40 minutes.
ReviewEvery application is read against the criteria below. You will hear back within five business days.
ConversationA 30-minute call about the prototype and how you would approach it.
Prototype scopeHelp define what the Phase IA prototype will be and how it will be built. About 5 to 10 hours, unpaid.
ProposalNamed on the submission as part of the technology development team.

The project

ORFF Maestra LLC is preparing a proposal to the U.S. Department of Education's SBIR program for an assessment reasoning and training platform for school-based speech-language pathologists. It implements TTL-MSM, a decision framework for the disorder-versus-difference determination in school eligibility evaluations.

The framework is fully specified in writing. Phase IA is a nine-month project: build the first working prototype, then pilot it with practicing school SLPs working constructed case profiles. No students or student records are involved in Phase IA.

The team includes a university research lead, who runs the pilot study, and the Project Director, who wrote the framework.

Project Director: Sybrey “Sunny” L. Callwood, CCC-SLP. The next ED/IES SBIR Phase IA solicitation has not yet been released.

The role

This role sits between the written specification and the engineering. You turn what the framework requires into a prototype that school SLPs can use.

Before submission, help define the prototype's scope and the plan for building it within nine months and the Phase IA budget.
If funded, lead the prototype build part-time over the nine-month performance period: turning the specification into requirements, working day to day with the developer, and keeping the build on schedule.
Be named on the proposal as part of the technology development team.

Strong candidates bring

Experience guiding a software product from written requirements to a working prototype, as a technical product manager, program manager, product owner, or technical lead
Experience translating between subject-matter experts and engineers
Enough familiarity with how web applications are built to work closely with engineers
Experience running usability testing or gathering user feedback (preferred)
Education technology or health technology experience (preferred)

Compensation

$75 to $100 per hour, contingent on award. If funded, the work runs about 5 to 8 hours a week over nine months, roughly 180 to 300 hours.

Before submission, helping define the prototype scope takes about 5 to 10 hours and is unpaid.

How applications are reviewed

Each application is read against the same five criteria.

Criterion	What we look for
Product experience	You have guided a product from requirements to a working prototype and can describe your role in it.
Scoping	You can decide what belongs in a first prototype and what waits, given a fixed timeline and budget.
Translation	You can turn a non-technical expert's specification into requirements an engineer can build from, and catch misunderstandings early.
Users	You keep the people who will use the tool at the center, and know how to check decisions with them.
Capacity	You can contribute before submission and meet the nine-month commitment.

Apply

All fields are required unless marked optional. Questions: sybrey@orffmaestra.com

About you

Full name

State of residence

I am a U.S. citizen or permanent resident (green card holder), and I would perform this work in the United States.

Current or most recent roleTitle and organization.

Link to your résumé or profileLinkedIn, GitHub, a portfolio, or a shared document. Please check that it opens without signing in.

Experience and capacity

Describe one product you guided from written requirements to a working prototype, and your role in it.About 100 to 200 words.

Can you give a few hours over the next six weeks to help shape the prototype scope?

Yes No

If funded, can you commit part-time for nine months?

Yes Unsure No

Work sample

The prototype is designed to support school SLPs through three steps: choosing which sources of evidence to gather for an assessment and seeing what they cover (a public version is at callwoodslp.com/matrix); coding each source as supporting disorder or difference and combining the codes with a fixed rule (a public version of the table is at callwoodslp.com/table); and getting feedback on the reasoning in the clinician's written determination.

The rules for each step are already written down in detail. What does not exist yet is software.

With nine months and a lean budget, what would you build first, and what would you leave for a later phase? Why?About 100 to 200 words.

The person who wrote the specification is a clinician with no engineering background. How would you turn the specification into requirements an engineer can build from, and how would you catch misunderstandings early?About 150 to 250 words.

Clinicians testing the prototype and the developer disagree about how a screen should work. How would you decide, and how would you check the decision with users?About 100 to 200 words.

One last thing

Where did you hear about this role? Optional.

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