H2 2026 Search Recap
GovTech SaaS / Product & Data
A confidential mandate where the market was narrow, the business need was immediate, and the hiring decision required more than a stack of résumés.
The work behind the hire
Brass Tracks organized the uncertainty, tested the assumptions, and gave the leadership team a smaller set of better-supported decisions.
The company needed a product owner who could understand pavement condition data, investigate quality issues in large datasets, write SQL, shape product priorities, and translate between Engineering, Operations, customers, and leadership. Very few candidates naturally sat across all of those worlds.
Conventional product profiles were often too far from the data. Pure analysts could investigate the problem but had not owned a roadmap or driven decisions across functions. The strongest candidates combined analytical depth with the confidence to make product tradeoffs.
The search shifted away from title matching and toward evidence. The deciding profile had to trace data problems to their source, explain what they meant for customers, and turn that understanding into clear product priorities.
Brass Tracks built the search around analytical depth and product judgment first, then narrowed for people who could own data quality, work directly in SQL, and translate operational needs into a practical roadmap.
The result
Mandate architecture
Put dedicated ownership behind the product, data, and AI buildout in 23 days.
SQL fluency, infrastructure-data judgment, product ownership, and cross-functional authority across Engineering, Operations, and customers.
Evidence of tracing data problems to their source and turning them into clear product priorities.
The difficult search
The mandate that combines too many things. The market that appears too narrow. The role other firms keep turning into the same predictable slate.