Senior Product Manager, Discourse Graphs

Astera Institute•Emeryville, CA

11d•Remote

About The Position

Discourse Graphs is an open-source project that helps research teams document, link, and share questions, claims, and evidence through plugins for Roam Research and Obsidian backed by a shared database. The project is philanthropically funded and built by a small team distributed across North America, Europe, and India, working with research labs that pilot the tools. The Senior Product Manager will join a distributed team of engineers, designers, and researchers developing and testing tools for collaborative science. The role will shape product strategy with the founders, determine priorities, and help decide the product’s direction, including its relationship to Obsidian, potential standalone applications, integration with researchers’ existing tools, and possible expansion to adjacent use cases. Product decisions will be informed by researchers’ needs and existing user feedback, prioritizing work that users depend on. The work is hands-on and collaborative, without a product team reporting to the role. The Product Manager will speak regularly with researchers, synthesize feedback into an ordered queue of work with designers and developers, and present ideas as working prototypes. Engineers select work from the queue; the role does not involve assigning tasks, running sprints, or serving as a Scrum Master. The team works primarily in writing across time zones and is moving toward pair programming, short iterations, and regular retrospectives. The position is fully remote, with some overlap with North American working hours; in-person work at Astera in Emeryville, California is also possible. The role is fixed-term for 12 to 18 months, with either temporary employment through the Astera Institute or a contract arrangement at the same annual rate. Applicants are asked to indicate their availability and preference for employment or contract.

Requirements

Comfort soliciting and navigating user input in the context of documented user flows.
A habit of talking with users every week and showing ideas as prototypes.
Ability to work alongside designers and engineers rather than handing work to them.
Experience working without a manager, including identifying and taking on needed work and keeping others informed in writing.
Comfort synthesizing diverse user needs and feedback into high-level priorities and concrete prototypes.
Usability-focused design instincts and ability to meet users within their existing workflows.
Willingness to test early-stage ideas with users and change course based on observations.
Comfort guiding a team as a team member.

Responsibilities

Shape product strategy with the founders, including product direction, priorities, and how to achieve them.
Consider product direction questions such as whether the product should remain a set of Obsidian plugins or become a standalone app, how it should fit into researchers’ existing tools, and whether to expand to adjacent use cases.
Prioritize researchers’ needs and ensure work users depend on comes first.
Talk with researchers who use the tools and synthesize their feedback into product priorities.
Create and maintain an ordered queue of work in collaboration with the designer and developers.
Present product ideas as working prototypes and revise them based on user feedback.
Work alongside designers and engineers as a team member rather than handing off work.
Work independently, identify what needs doing, take it on, and keep colleagues updated in writing.