Senior Product Manager, Discourse Graphs

Astera Institute•Emeryville, CA

12d•$110,000 - $195,000•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. It is philanthropically funded and developed by a small, distributed team across North America, Europe, and India, alongside research labs piloting the tools. The Senior Product Manager will shape product strategy with the founders, helping determine the product’s direction, priorities, and path forward as it evolves with its researcher user base. The role includes considering how the product should fit into researchers’ existing tools and workflows, whether it should expand beyond its current plugins, and whether to develop adjacent use cases. Decisions should follow user interest while prioritizing work researchers already depend on. This is a hands-on role without a product team reporting to the Product Manager. Responsibilities include speaking regularly with researchers, synthesizing feedback into an ordered work queue with designers and developers, and communicating ideas through working prototypes as well as written documentation. The team is distributed and largely works in writing across time zones. Engineers select work from the queue themselves; the Product Manager does not assign tasks, run sprints, or act as a Scrum Master. The team is moving toward pair programming, short iterations, and regular retrospectives, and has no managers. The role is full-time and fixed-term for 12 to 18 months, either as a temporary employee of the Astera Institute or on contract at the same annual rate. It is fully remote with some overlap with North American working hours, and in-person work is also possible at Astera in Emeryville, California. The employer would like the successful candidate to start as soon as possible.

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 off to them.
Experience working without a manager, including identifying needed work, taking it on, and keeping others updated in writing.
Ability to synthesize diverse user needs and feedback into high-level priorities and concrete prototypes.
Usability-focused design instincts and an interest in meeting users within their existing workflows.
Comfort putting early-stage ideas in front of users and changing course based on what is learned.

Responsibilities

Shape product strategy with the founders, including the product’s direction, priorities, and approach to execution.
Talk regularly with researchers who use the tools and synthesize their feedback and needs.
Develop and maintain an ordered queue of work in collaboration with the designer and developers.
Create and share working prototypes to communicate and test product ideas.
Prioritize work based on user needs and the product vision.
Guide the team as a contributing team member rather than as a task assigner or manager.