Founding Product Manager

Job description

**About Lumen Energy** Lumen Energy is the modern solar broker for commercial real estate. We partner with leading real estate owners to turn their rooftops into revenue. Lumen delivers rigorous portfolio analysis, creates transparent competition among top developers, and provides white-glove service throughout. Our efficient, technology-backed approach gives our customers clarity, confidence, and reliable returns—scaling clean energy without added complexity. We are proud to be among the fastest-growing companies in our category and are backed by world-class VCs like Lowercarbon Capital, Moxxie Ventures, and Designer Fund. We seek colleagues who are passionate about making real change in the built environment, excited to work at the leading edge of energy and real estate, and want to contribute to a high-performing team. Join us on our mission to profitably decarbonize buildings. **The Role** We’re seeking a **Founding Product Manager** to join our technology team. This high-impact, high-visibility role is perfect for someone who thrives on building from scratch: someone who can create structure where there isn’t any, build conviction with incomplete information, and operate as a partner to our internal team and customers. You’ll be Lumen’s first dedicated PM, which means you won’t be inheriting a mature roadmap, an existing research practice, or a PM org to plug into. You’ll be defining what product management looks like here, with the autonomy, access, and trust to do it. You’ll report directly to our Head of Engineering and work cross-functionally with Engineering, Sales, and Marketplace Operations to deliver an exceptional clean energy transaction experience for building owners and solar+battery developers alike. **What You’ll Do** - Own and evolve a prioritized product roadmap for Lumen’s commercial solar and storage marketplace, informed by real user feedback, business priorities, and clear success metrics. - Shape features from discovery through implementation-ready prototypes. They should be clear enough that engineers can build confidently without constant back-and-forth to resolve ambiguity. - Serve as the connective tissue between Engineering, Sales, Ops, and Leadership: synthesize competing inputs, drive toward aligned decisions, and keep the product work moving. - Define success metrics before features ship and track whether they actually move the needle after they do. - Run a continuous user research practice: talk to building owners, solar developers, and internal stakeholders on a regular cadence, and turn what you learn into product decisions and priorities. **Who You Are (and Why You’ll Thrive Here)** - **Outcome-oriented, not output-oriented.** You treat “I shipped the feature” and “the feature worked” as very different things, and you hold yourself accountable to the latter. - **High agency, at home within ambiguity.** You don’t wait for someone to hand you a process or a brief. The absence of a playbook energizes you. You build conviction from incomplete information and make the call. - **Generative, then decisive.** You’re the person who can brainstorm five wild ideas, and then pick the one that’s actually shippable. You’d rather make a strong call now than wait for perfection, but you know when to push for more input and when to trust your gut. - **Opinionated out loud.** You form a view on what we should build and why, and you put it on the table, including when it’s unpopular. When someone shows you better information, you change your mind fast. Once a call is made, you carry it like it was yours. - **Collaborative and influential.** You make complex trade-offs legible to engineers, ops, and leadership, and you get people aligned without grinding everything to a halt or burning bridges. - **A strong writer.** You translate between audiences. The same decision gets explained to an engineer, an ops lead, and a CRE owner, and each version is accurate, and none of them are padded. We work async, so writing is how the thinking gets transmitted, not a report you produce after the thinking is done. - **An eager adopter of new technology.** You’re excited about AI tools and actively curious about what the PM role looks like when teams can build ten times faster. - **A genuine researcher.** You find customer conversations energizing rather than a chore, and you know how to turn qualitative signal into clear product decisions. - **Motivated by mission.** You care about clean energy, and you want the work to put real megawatts on real roofs. **Qualifications** **Required:** - 5+ years of product management experience in a high-growth or startup environment, with demonstrated ownership of end-to-end product cycles from discovery through delivery and measurement - Fluency with AI-assisted product development workflows, using LLMs to accelerate prototyping, research synthesis, and spec writing - Strong visual and UX sensibility, particularly since we don’t have a dedicated designer - Strong written communicator: can write prose documents to convey business context and customer needs so that engineers and AI can build without constant clarification and ambiguity - High agency and influence: A track record of owning and defending a product roadmap, including making hard prioritization calls when resources are constrained - Business acumen: you can reason about trade-offs between user value, technical complexity, and commercial impact, and connect product decisions to business outcomes - Strong user research chops: knows how to design and run customer interviews, synthesize qualitative findings, and translate them into product decisions and priorities **Nice to Have:** - Familiarity with two-sided marketplace dynamics - Experience in commercial real estate, legal tech, or other complex transaction-based businesses - Prior experience in a client-facing role such as customer success or sales - Track record as the first or only PM at a company — you’ve built a PM practice from scratch rather than inherited a mature one *Include a cover letter that explains how your skills and past experiences translate to this role* **Why Lumen** - **Work that matters**: every rooftop we convert accelerates decarbonization at scale. Deploying more solar and storage to electrify the grid is one of the most important problems of this century. - **A team that moves fast**: we value clear thinking over politics or hierarchy, and we use AI tools extensively to build faster. No one has fully figured out what the PM role looks like in that context yet. If you find that interesting rather than unsettling, you’ll do well here. - **High ownership, early on**: you’ll work directly with engineers and leadership. When you make a case for something, the people who can act on it are in the room. - **Broad scope**: in addition to pure product, you’ll shape how we approach user research, product marketing, design, and UX. You’ll wear more hats than a typical PM role. - **Competitive salary, benefits, and equity participation** **Compensation & Benefits** **Salary Range:** $172,000 - $215,000 base salary, plus equity and annual company performance bonus *Final compensation will be determined based on experience, skills, and geographic location* **Benefits include:** - Meaningful equity in an early-stage company, with a 10-year post-termination exercise window so you aren't forced to buy your options the moment you leave - Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance - 401(k) plan - 16 weeks of paid parental leave for primary or secondary caregivers - Flexible PTO with no formal minimum or maximum (we encourage at least 20 days a year) - Fully remote within the US, with an office in San Francisco and quarterly all-team, in-person weeks - Home office and equipment stipend - $500 annual learning budget ## About the interview (typically 2-3 weeks) - 30: Introduction call with Kerri Devine (Head of Engineering) - 60 minutes: Engineering collaboration interview with 2 engineers - 60 minutes: Product craft and stakeholder management interview - 60-75 minutes: Case study panel discussion - 45 minutes: Leadership & customer empathy discussion with Peter Light (CEO) - *We may request subsequent interviews here if we didn’t get enough signal in a particular competency.* - (Optional): You’re welcome to have conversation(s) with your cross-functional peers to interview us. *Lumen Energy is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diverse perspectives and are committed to building an inclusive workplace. US work authorization required. We are unable to sponsor H1B visas at this time. If you need an accommodation at any stage of the interview process, email* [*hiring@lumen.energy*](mailto:hiring@lumen.energy)*.*