Technical Product Manager, Product Experience

Character.AI•Redwood City, CA

2d•$200,000 - $300,000

About The Position

Character.AI is seeking a high-leverage, force-multiplying Technical Program Manager (TPM) to partner directly with the Chief Product Officer (CPO). This role will operate across the entire product and design purview of the CPO to ensure core development engines run seamlessly. This is not a traditional, rigid corporate TPM role. The ideal candidate will possess "fixer energy"—a relentless, high-agency problem-solver with a founder's mindset, exceptional execution skills, and the technical weight to act as a core operational extension of the CPO. The TPM will be the ultimate guardian of momentum, responsible for chasing down engineering bottlenecks, optimizing cross-functional roadmaps, and ensuring team velocity scales alongside the technology.

Requirements

Founder Energy & High Agency: Extreme ownership, proactive problem-solving, and autonomous action.
Execution Machine: Strong background in technical program management, product management, or an intensive technical operations role with experience navigating fast-moving tech roadmaps.
High Cognitive Agility: Ability to switch between deep technical discussions with engineers and high-level roadmap prioritization with design and product leaders.
Relentless Communicator: Crisp, direct, and excellent at synthesis, ensuring seamless information flow.
AI-Curious: Genuine fascination with artificial intelligence and eagerness to experiment with cutting-edge tools.
Experience enabling product/design teams to become "AI-ready" is a major plus.
Proven track record of intensive work, extreme attention to detail, and cross-functional influence (especially for Management Consulting Alums).
Stability, structured execution, and mentorship capabilities (especially for Seasoned Operational Leaders).

Nice To Haves

Experience enabling product/design teams to become "AI-ready".

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end execution of major initiatives under the CPO's umbrella, ensuring critical product, design, and engineering milestones are hit without friction.
Proactively manage cross-functional dependencies across product, design, and engineering teams, ensuring development is never stalled for information or decisions.
Attend weekly core team meetings, capture critical technical notes, synthesize action items, and chase down owners for rigorous follow-through.
Analyze current team workflows and design/implement lightweight, scalable processes to improve cross-functional execution across the software development life cycle (SDLC).
Build deep context on the CPO's vision and product strategy to bridge the gap between creative design concepts and technical implementation.
Solve ambiguous, complex technical or operational problems that don't neatly fall into a single team's bucket.
Actively leverage AI tools (like Gemini) to optimize team workflows, ensure project knowledge is captured efficiently, and explore agentic workflows to enhance team intelligence.