Product Lead (Core Platform & AI)

Job description

About Collective: Collective is on a mission to redefine the way businesses-of-one work. Our technology and team of trusted advisors help members achieve financial independence by taking care of everything from business incorporation to accounting, bookkeeping, tax services, and access to a thriving community, all in one integrated platform. We believe in empowering self-employed people to enjoy the same tax savings that big companies get, so they can focus on their passion, not paperwork. Featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Yahoo, Bloomberg, Financial Times, TechCrunch, and more. We are backed by General Catalyst, Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary), QED Investors, Google’s Gradient Ventures, Expa, and other investors who have financed iconic companies like YouTube, Substack, Twitch, Box, Hims, Instacart, and Lyft. About the role: We're hiring a Product Lead for our Core Platform to architect the connective tissue of the entire Collective member experience. This role owns the horizontal infrastructure — the unified task system, dashboard, messaging layer, and core UI components — that every vertical product at Collective is built on top of. You'll define and build a function that doesn't yet exist, embedding AI into the platform layer from the ground up and setting the standards that every other product team adopts. What you'll do: - Own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for Collective's Core Platform — the unified task system, dashboard, messaging infrastructure, and shared components that define every member's experience across the entire product ecosystem - Define and mandate the System of Record for tasks and communications that all vertical product teams (Payroll, Accounting, Tax, etc.) must adopt to ensure a coherent, low-noise member experience - Architect the AI integration layer and design how the AI support system connects to the task framework to proactively guide members, deflect support load, and reduce friction before members ever need to contact a human agent - Set the technical standards for task schemas, notification logic, lifecycle states, component contracts, that make it possible for vertical teams to build on your platform without fragmenting the experience - Partner with Internal Tools and Operations to ensure human-in-the-loop workflows have the visibility, automation, and tooling they need to support members efficiently and move toward automated resolution where AI can carry the load - Drive the roadmap and make tradeoff decisions between platform integrity, vertical team speed, and immediate business priorities — with a clear point of view on each call - Measure platform health through the right metrics — shared system adoption, task completion rates, AI deflection rates, ops efficiency — and use that data to drive prioritization - Lead cross-functional alignment across product, engineering, design, and ops to ensure the platform layer gets built, adopted, and continuously improved What you'll bring: - 7+ years of product management or technical experience, with meaningful time spent on platform, infrastructure, or horizontal systems products — you've owned the layer that other teams build on top of - AI product experience — you've shipped products where AI is embedded in the core workflow, not bolted on as a feature. Ideally hands-on with LLMs, agentic systems, or AI support layers in a real product context; at minimum, deeply fluent in AI capabilities - Platform builder instincts — you know the difference between a product for end users and infrastructure for a product organization, and how to implement both. - First-principles thinking under ambiguity — this role is being invented. You won't inherit a roadmap; you'll write one from scratch - Strong cross-functional credibility — you can hold a platform standard without burning peer relationships, and you know when to enforce versus when to flex based on legitimate edge cases - Data fluency — comfortable diagnosing platform health, measuring system adoption, and making prioritization decisions from data without needing a translation layer Comfort operating in fast-paced, high-growth environments where the product and the org are being built simultaneously What we offer: - Hybrid Work Model: Based in San Francisco with a balance of in-office and remote flexibility - Fresh Lunch: Provided on in-office days - Commuter Support: $200 monthly reimbursement for transit expenses - Health & Wellness: $200 quarterly reimbursement to support your well-being - Time Off: Flexible PTO plus 14 company holidays - Comprehensive Coverage: 100% medical, dental, and vision for employees; 75% coverage for dependents - Parental Leave: 16 weeks fully paid - Retirement & Ownership: 401k plan plus an equity package - Team Connection: Quarterly virtual events and an annual in-person summit