Founding Product Manager

Job description

### About the Role This is a founding product role at a small, fast-moving team building vertical SaaS and AI tooling for the skilled trades industry in the German market. You will own product end-to-end, working directly with engineering to ship features that solve real problems for real users. It is a high-ownership, high-impact position with no management layers between you and the work. ### What You'll Do - Own the full product direction, from understanding user problems to shaping solutions and shipping them. - Translate company goals into clear product bets, priorities, and tradeoffs. - Work closely with engineering to scope, design, and deliver features quickly. - Make confident product decisions with incomplete information and course-correct fast. - Develop a deep understanding of users, their workflows, and real-world constraints. - Bring clarity to the team on what is being built, why, and what done looks like. - Help define and scale how product work happens as the company grows. - Operate in a low-ceremony, high-velocity environment with direct feedback and fast loops. ### What We're Looking For - Genuine end-to-end product management experience with proven ownership in early-stage startup environments. - Meaningful hands-on experience at a pre-Series B or seed-stage company; primarily corporate or late-stage backgrounds are not a fit. - AI-native mindset: comfortable applying AI-first product patterns and using AI tools actively in product development. - Strong technical understanding and experience scoping and shipping features directly with engineers. - Good product taste with close attention to UX and detail, even without a formal design background. - High agency: you take ownership, push things forward, and do not wait for permission. - Comfortable being wrong and correcting course quickly in the face of ambiguity. - Native or near-native German proficiency (at least C1, spoken and written); the product and many partners operate in German. - Fluent English for internal communication. - Independent side projects or products you have built on your own are a strong plus. ### Compensation & Benefits Salary range: **80,000 to 100,000 EUR annually**. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role. ### Location On-site, five days a week in **Berlin-Mitte, Germany**. Daily in-office presence is required.