Staff Product Manager

Eli • New York, NY

7d • $180,000 - $220,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Eli is building a better system to help utilities, government agencies, and their partners run energy programs. Their platform streamlines processes from project qualification to payment issuance, and they also advance money to contractors before underlying rebates are paid, improving contractor cash flow. Since launching in December 2023, Eli has processed hundreds of thousands of projects and advanced nearly $50 million to contractors. The company is seeking its first Staff Product Manager to lead the development of financial products that make money movement easy to understand, operate, and trust, especially focusing on the financial systems behind contractor advances. This role requires understanding the operational context of installations and working across business boundaries. The Staff Product Manager will work directly with product leadership and senior engineering, have ownership of financial products, and influence platform priorities. The role is designed for a senior individual contributor who can research, prototype, validate, and ship solutions. Eli is deeply AI-native, utilizing internal AI tools to accelerate the development process from idea to working software, and the new hire will help further refine these practices.

Requirements

• Operated at Staff-level scope or demonstrated equivalent impact, typically through 8+ years in product management or adjacent product-building roles.
• Deep experience with lending, payments, servicing, reconciliation, treasury, ledgers, credit, or other parts of financial infrastructure. Experience with contractor finance, receivables-backed lending, or capital products is especially relevant.
• Alternatively, deep experience building software for energy programs or another complex, compliance-heavy, rules-based operation, along with strong financial judgment and the ability to learn a new domain quickly.
• Proven ability to take ambiguous, important problems from initial investigation to a product used in the real world, with a focus on outcomes.
• Understanding that financial-product problems may require better data models, operational policies, controls, integrations, or processes, not just interface improvements.
• Comfort with details, including reasoning about money movement, transaction failures, user actions, and handling exceptions.
• Ability to work effectively with engineers, providing context and precision for technical decisions, remaining available during implementation, and ensuring product success.
• Skill in communicating complex ideas in plain language to foster shared understanding among operators, engineers, finance teams, and leaders.
• Experience using AI as a serious building tool, not just for writing or analysis, with the ability to explain what AI enabled and where it failed.
• Willingness to change one's mind, compare ideas, recognize weak evidence, and redirect or stop unproductive work.
• Desire for a role where seniority means greater responsibility for outcomes, not distance from users, implementation, or building work.
• Depth in a hard domain, strong product judgment, and the range to understand how a complex business fits together.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with contractor finance, receivables-backed lending, or capital products.
• Deep experience building software for energy programs or another complex, compliance-heavy, rules-based operation.
• Strong financial judgment and the ability to learn a new domain quickly.

Responsibilities

• Build a reliable financial system for contractor payments, creating products that clearly show advances, expected collections, repayments, and areas needing intervention.
• Improve the flow of money through the business by making payments, reconciliation, collections, and reporting faster and less reliant on spreadsheets, manual investigation, or limited knowledge.
• Translate operational complexity into clear products by understanding user workflows, exception causes, and designing simple operational designs.
• Identify key problems that constrain the business and sequence product bets to create learning or unlock future development, then personally prototype, validate, and ship these bets.
• Lead work from discovery through production, including problem research, assumption testing, prototyping, requirement definition, engineering partnership, and impact evaluation.
• Utilize AI to increase team leverage, prioritizing prototypes and working software over extensive documentation, and helping to improve tools and practices for rapid learning and shipping.
• Contribute to company priorities beyond the initial area of focus, shaping future capabilities and product roles as the company grows.

Benefits

• Generous medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible, unlimited time off, with a minimum of three weeks encouraged
• Hybrid work, with approximately two in-person days per week preferred
• At least two company gatherings each year
• Budget to co-work when solving difficult problems together
• A welcoming, family- and parent-friendly environment that values humility, honesty, and humor

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed