Founding Product Director, NDot AI

Job description

**About NewsBreak** **Local life runs on local information.** What happened down the street? Who can fix this? Where should we go tonight? NewsBreak started in 2015 to answer these questions, and today more than 40 million people a month rely on us to follow what’s going on in their zip code. **Three platforms with one vision: powering local life.** Led by founder and CEO Jeff Zheng, NewsBreak is our local life and news platform; Nearby AI connects people with local businesses; and NDot AI helps publishers and creators grow and earn. **Building for the long term.** A $115 million Series C made us a unicorn in 2021, and we keep investing in our people. We’re Great Place to Work® certified and named to *Fast Company*’s Best Workplaces for Innovators (2025) and *Fortune*’s Best Workplaces in the Bay Area™ (2026). **Everyone makes an impact.** Whether you write code, shape products, tell our story, or run the business, we want people who own projects end to end, stay curious, and speak up. Join us. Learn more at: NewsBreak, Nearby AI, NDot AI **About NDot AI** Build the owned-audience growth infrastructure for the future of media. ### About the Role We're looking for a 0→1 product leader to own the NDot product roadmap and the publisher experience end to end. This is a highly customer-facing role: you'll spend real time in publisher meetings, work side-by-side with engineers on product and technical tradeoffs, and make the call on which customer requests should become reusable platform capabilities versus one-off custom work. You'll be building reusable platform capabilities that can ultimately serve publishers and adjacent digital content businesses (e.g., short dramas), while sequencing that expansion deliberately rather than chasing every vertical at once. ### What You'll Do - Run structured discovery with publishers to build a clear, evidence-based view of their priority needs, and translate that into a focused product roadmap. - Ship visible improvements to the publisher portal and publisher experience (reporting, insights, and beyond). - Define the minimum product and integration required for lighthouse customers, and establish clear success metrics for each. - Work directly with engineering on architecture, APIs, data, and integrations — you'll need enough technical depth to be a real thought partner, not just a requirements-writer. - Build a repeatable loop from customer feedback → prioritization → launch → measurement, and use it to productize the most valuable recurring needs across onboarding, analytics, engagement/growth, and integrations. - Design the platform so proven capabilities can extend to adjacent verticals without fragmenting the roadmap. ### What We're Looking For **Must have** - Strong customer discovery, product strategy, and prioritization skills, with real analytics chops and technical fluency across APIs, data, and integrations. - Strong customer empathy and judgment; a structured thinker with a bias for action who's comfortable with ambiguity and can separate scalable product needs from bespoke requests. - Senior-level PM experience, including having built a 0→1 B2B/platform product and worked directly with customers and small engineering teams. **Nice to have** - Experience with recommendation/personalization, growth, monetization, or AI products. - Strong commercial instinct and executive presence. - Background in publisher/media tech, adtech, or consumer-growth, or experience productizing internal technology for external customers. ### Why Join - Build the product foundation for a new AI-native B2B platform, with significant ownership over what NDot becomes. - Turn NewsBreak's capabilities in recommendation, growth, monetization, and AI agents into scalable products — first for publishers, and ultimately for a broader set of digital content businesses. - Work directly with customers and a small, high-leverage engineering team to turn real needs into repeatable products. **Benefits** We offer a competitive benefits package: - Health, dental, and vision care for you and your family (100% coverage for employee) - Top-tier 401(K) plan with company matching - Paid time off and paid holidays - FSA, HSA and commuter benefits programs - Team activity budget The US base salary range for this full-time position is listed below. Pay may vary based on a number of factors including job-related skills, level, experience, geographic location and relevant education or training. At NewsBreak, we design our overall rewards package to attract top talents. Depending on the position, the role may also be eligible for discretionary bonus and options. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process. Annual Base Pay Range $235,000—$345,000 USD [CPRA Privacy Notice for California Candidates](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15apsJLgHq1p5NJR3fzFmdctKX4QIzzf2/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110601223912453011659&rtpof=true&sd=true)