Staff Product Manager

Eli • New York City, NY

3d • Hybrid

About The Position

Eli America is investing trillions of dollars to make homes and buildings more efficient, electric, and resilient. But the programs paying for these upgrades still run on paperwork, manual review, and disconnected systems. Contractors can wait months to receive money they have already earned. Program administrators struggle to process projects quickly and accurately. Too much funding is lost to administrative friction before it reaches the buildings it was intended to improve. Eli is building a better system. Our platform helps utilities, government agencies, and their partners run energy programs, from determining whether a project qualifies to reviewing documentation, reporting results, and issuing payments. We also advance money to contractors before the underlying rebates are paid, giving them the cash flow to keep taking on new work. Since launching in December 2023, Eli has processed hundreds of thousands of projects and advanced nearly $50 million to contractors. We are now preparing to support a much larger volume of projects and capital. To do that well, we need financial products that make every dollar moving through Eli easy to understand, operate, and trust. The Opportunity We are looking for our first Staff Product Manager to lead that work. Your initial focus will be the financial systems behind Eli’s contractor advances. We need to know what we have paid, what programs owe us, when we expect to be repaid, what has actually arrived, and where something requires attention. You will turn that complexity into a reliable product for our finance and operations teams and, over time, for contractors, customers, and capital partners. This is not only a payments or reconciliation problem. The movement of money depends on what happened with the installation: whether the project qualified, whether the work was completed correctly, whether the right evidence was approved, and whether a program accepted the claim. Building the financial system therefore requires understanding the operating system around it. You will work across those boundaries without being expected to become an expert in every part of the business on day one. You will work directly with Eli’s product lead, founders, and a senior engineering team. You will have primary ownership of financial products and meaningful influence on priorities across the broader platform. The role is designed for a senior individual contributor: someone who can help decide what matters, then personally research, prototype, validate, and ship the solution. Eli is deeply AI-native, both in the product we sell, and in how we build the company. We have developed internal AI tools that bring together business context, product requirements, design, and the codebase to help turn an idea into working software. This allows product leaders to carry an idea much farther toward implementation and lets a small product and engineering team explore more possibilities than its size would ordinarily allow. We are still inventing this way of operating, and you will help us push it further.

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, you may bring 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.
• Taken ambiguous, important problems from initial investigation to a product used in the real world.
• Understand that many financial-product problems are not primarily interface problems.
• Can identify when the answer requires a better data model, operational policy, control, integration, or process—and when software is not the answer.
• Comfortable in the details. Can reason clearly about how money moves, what should happen when a transaction fails, who can take an action, and how the system should handle cases that do not follow the expected path.
• Work well with engineers. Provide enough context and precision to make good technical decisions together, remain available as implementation reveals new information, and stay accountable until the product works.
• Can communicate complex ideas in plain language.
• Use AI as a serious building tool, not only for writing or analysis.
• Made a product, internal tool, prototype, or side project with modern AI tools and can explain what they allowed you to do, and where they failed.
• Willing to change your mind. Can compare your preferred idea with the alternatives, recognize when the evidence is weak, and stop or redirect work that is not producing the expected result.
• Want a role where seniority means greater responsibility for the outcome, not greater distance from users, implementation, or the work of building.
• Depth in a hard domain, evidence of 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 is especially relevant.
• Alternatively, you may bring 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.

Responsibilities

• Build a reliable financial system for contractor payments.
• Create products that clearly show what Eli has advanced, what it expects to collect, what has been repaid, and what needs intervention.
• Improve the flow of money through the business.
• Make payments, reconciliation, collections, and reporting faster and less dependent on spreadsheets, manual investigation, or knowledge held by a few people.
• Turn operational complexity into clear products.
• Spend time with the people doing the work, understand why exceptions occur, and design workflows that are simple for users to operate against the rules underneath them.
• Know what matters, and turn that judgment into product.
• Understand how Eli creates value, identify the few problems that most constrain the business, and sequence product bets so each one creates learning or unlocks the next. Then personally prototype, validate, and ship those bets, changing course when the evidence calls for it.
• Lead work from discovery through production. Research problems, test assumptions, build prototypes, define requirements and edge cases, partner closely with engineers during implementation, and evaluate impact of the results.
• Use AI to increase the team’s building leverage.
• Prioritize prototypes and working software over documents and reports.
• Help improve the tools and practices that allow a small product and engineering team to learn and ship quickly.
• Help shape what comes next. As you develop a clear view of Eli’s business, contribute to priorities beyond your initial area and help shape what capabilities and product roles the company will need as it grows.

Benefits

• Generous medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible, unlimited time off, with a minimum of three weeks encouraged
• At least two company gatherings each year and 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