Associate Product Manager (Contracting/Action Processing)

impact.com•Santa Barbara, CA

5d•$85,000 - $95,000•Hybrid

About The Position

impact.com is seeking a technical Associate Product Manager for the Action Processing (AP) and Contracting Squad. This role is crucial for defining how brands and partners establish terms, commissions, lists, and contract workflows that drive revenue on the platform. The Associate Product Manager will collaborate closely with a Senior Product Manager and Engineering team to deliver customer value in a complex, data-intensive domain. This position emphasizes strong execution, rapid learning, and quick ownership expansion under structured coaching, with a focus on speed and rigor in requirement definition and delivery.

Requirements

Early-career product experience (internships, APM/PM rotation, technical PM adjacent roles, founder/builder experience, or equivalent impact) — or strong evidence of operating at this level from a technical background.
Degree in engineering or computer science (or a closely related technical field), with a strong academic record.
Technical orientation: curiosity about how systems work, not only how tickets move.
Comfort running basic analyses from source data and using insights to inform decisions.
Experience using AI tools in real work (drafting, research synthesis, analysis, light prototyping, or workflow automation).
Ability to achieve fast time to value on requirements: get to a solid first draft quickly, iterate with feedback, and avoid over-shaping before engineering can react.
Bias to execution: prioritize ruthlessly, close loops, and ship outcomes over activity.
Experience writing structured requirements in Markdown (or similar) including user stories, acceptance criteria, and lightweight specs.
Comfort working near a codebase/GitHub context (coursework, internships, side projects, or prior roles count).
Clear written and verbal communication skills; ability to turn ambiguous asks into structured requirements and acceptance criteria.
Comfort working with engineers and designers in an agile delivery environment.
Comfort with complex/lightly documented systems and learning by immersion.
Strong organization and follow-through: track owners, dates, and open questions without dropping balls.
Curiosity, coachability, and a bias to learn by doing; ask good questions and incorporate feedback quickly.
Customer empathy: interest in how brands and partners experience contracting, action processing, terms, and monetization workflows.

Nice To Haves

Personal projects, prototypes, or scripts built with AI agents/coding assistants that demonstrate shipping capabilities.
Exposure to marketplace, fintech, SaaS monetization, contracting, or partner/platform products.
Experience triaging customer/support requests or working with Customer Success/field teams.

Responsibilities

Own focused feature slices with coaching from the Senior PM, with scope expanding based on execution and judgment.
Drive feature development for Action Processing (AP) and Contracting Squad initiatives, including terms/commission behaviors, list and audience rules, contract workflows, and customer-driven requests.
Write customer and business requirements (user stories, use cases, acceptance criteria) for engineering teams.
Partner with Engineering through the build process, identifying and surfacing risks, blockers, and acceptance gaps early.
Write and iterate on Markdown requirements adjacent to the GitHub repo and co-lead pre-spec and spec reviews.
Build a working understanding of AP and Contracting systems, including data flows, edge cases, dependencies, and failure modes.
Utilize AI tools and agents for drafting specs, synthesizing research, exploring prototypes, testing edge cases, and accelerating analysis.
Gain comfort reading technical context such as APIs, schemas, logs, tickets, and engineering design notes to ask sharp questions and write better requirements.
Protect engineering focus by defining clear 'definition of ready', pushing back on late scope changes, and avoiding rework due to unclear requirements.
Maintain a clear and healthy backlog for the assigned scope, ensuring ticket clarity, prioritization hygiene, meeting facilitation, and request triage.
Sequence and clarify work in partnership with the Senior PM and Engineering leads.
Facilitate working sessions with Engineering, Design, Customer Success/Technical Services, and adjacent PMs.
Hold regular alignment touchpoints with Product and Engineering leads to maintain clear priorities.
Contribute to clear communication of the squad’s planned roadmap within the assigned scope.
Partner with the Senior PM and Product Marketing on go-to-market activities for launches.
Involve appropriate stakeholders and escalate tradeoffs with crisp options.
Contribute near-term input to vision and strategic initiatives within the domain.
Build deep fluency in Action Processing (AP) and Contracting domain mechanics and adjacent dependencies.
Define and track success metrics for work, making progress visible to the Senior PM and product leadership.
Build stable, trusted working relationships internally and participate actively in team forums.
Consistently demonstrate impact.com’s Operating Principles.

Benefits

Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance
Office-only catered lunch every Thursday
Healthy snack bar
Great coffee
Flexible spending accounts
401(k)
Responsible PTO policy
Flexible working environment
Mental health and wellness benefit (up to 12 fully covered therapy/coaching sessions per year, with dependent coverage)
Monthly gym reimbursement policy
Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) with a 3-year vesting schedule
Free Coursera subscription
PXA courses
26 weeks of fully paid leave for primary caregiver
13 weeks fully paid leave for secondary caregiver
Technology stipend for home office setup
Monthly allowance for internet expenses