Spark Team Product Manager

Arkana Laboratories•Little Rock, AR

48d

About The Position

As the Spark Team Product Manager, you will be one half of SPARK, Arkana’s two-person embedded unit that owns the front of our AI-native development funnel: deciding which ideas deserve to exist, shaping them into well-formed problems, and running proofs of concept rigorous enough to justify a kill or a commit. Working alongside the Spark Team Engineer on focused 2-to-4-week engagements across departments, you will convert raw ideas into tested concepts and close every engagement with a documented decision: advance, return, or kill. You are comfortable being measured on decisions, not output, and you bring structure to ambiguous situations quickly. This is a founding role, and the SPARK practice is yours to help define. Seniority is dictated by the candidate: the mandate is fixed, and the level, scope, and expectations that come with it are calibrated to the person who takes on the challenge. We would rather stretch the role around the right hire than filter them out with a years requirement.

Requirements

Product management experience, ideally in healthcare, SaaS, or regulated environments
Demonstrated experience taking prototypes/features to production, and killing those that did not deserve it
Comfort with autonomy and accountability in short, high-focus engagements
Enough technical fluency to discuss APIs, data models, and deployment trade-offs without translation
Sharp intuition around UI/UX
Strong discovery and facilitation skills; able to surface real problems quickly
Clear, concise communicator, comfortable presenting recommendations to senior leadership
The judgment and standing to tell a department that its beloved tool should not exist
Ability to bring structure to ambiguous situations quickly

Responsibilities

Own the intake and vetting process for ideas surfaced across the company
Conduct discovery with end users and stakeholders to separate real problems from wishes
Frame each engagement as a testable question with explicit success and kill criteria
Partner with the Spark Team Engineer to scope proofs of concept that answer the question in weeks, not quarters
Make and document advance/return/kill recommendations; present them to senior leadership
Run engagement zero: triage the existing portfolio of vibe-coded applications
Assess PHI/PII touchpoints, data boundaries, and adoption risk as part of every concept
Identify opportunities to consolidate overlapping tools into a coherent platform narrative
Build the SPARK operating model itself: intake, engagement cadence, and decision documentation
Design and guide the roadmap for Arkana's operating system
Other duties as assigned