Sr. Product Manager — Tracker & Operational Workflows

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Instrumentl is building the AI-native operating system for grantseekers.

Today, over 5,500 nonprofits, universities, school districts, and public agencies use Instrumentl to discover funding, write grants, manage awards, and report on outcomes. We’ve helped customers win billions in grant funding and are rapidly expanding from grant discovery into the operational system of record for grants management.

We’re a profitable, high-growth SaaS company backed by Summit Partners, with strong product-market fit (NPS 65+) and a deep belief that AI will fundamentally transform how organizations secure and manage funding.

About the Role

We’re hiring a senior product leader to own Tracker — Instrumentl’s operational workspace for managing grants, workflows, deadlines, reporting, and institutional knowledge.

This is not a “feature PM” role.

Tracker is evolving into a canonical operational layer for grant teams: one structured system containing grants, tasks, reports, financial data, workflows, and organizational context — with saved views, reporting, automation, and AI layered on top.

You will lead product strategy, customer discovery, systems design, and execution for this vision.

The ideal candidate thinks in systems, workflows, entities, and operational truth — not isolated UI surfaces. They are equally comfortable discussing customer pain, data model tradeoffs, reporting architecture, workflow UX, and long-term product strategy.

This role is highly cross-functional and foundational to Instrumentl’s future platform strategy.

What You’ll Do

Product Leadership, Clarity & Curiosity (Most Important)

• Create clarity in ambiguous environments.
• Naturally synthesize messy inputs into structured product thinking.
• Demonstrate deep curiosity about customer workflows, operational pain, and product behavior.
• Proactively seeks customer conversations rather than treating discovery as a task.
• Bring energy, urgency, and intellectual ownership to the product area.
• Raise the quality of thinking across Engineering, Design, and GTM.

Product Strategy & Systems Thinking

• Define and evolve the long-term vision for Tracker as the operational system of record for grant management.
• Think in canonical objects, relationships, workflows, and operational states — not disconnected features.
• Help shape a flexible system that supports:
• saved views
• operational workflows
• reporting
• approvals
• financial tracking
• tasks
• AI-native workflows
• Build coherent product narratives that connect:
• market problems → operational pain → system architecture → workflow UX → customer outcomes.

Workflow & Operational Product Design

• Deeply understand how grants teams actually operate day-to-day:
• tracking deadlines
• coordinating contributors
• managing reporting
• monitoring awarded grants
• handling operational risk
• Design workflows that reduce operational chaos and improve organizational visibility.
• Create “judgment-laden” operational views that help customers answer questions like:
• “Am I okay?”
• “What needs attention?”
• “Where are we across all grants?”
• Balance flexibility with structure — avoiding both spreadsheet chaos and rigid enterprise software.

Data Model & Platform Fluency

• Partner deeply with Engineering and Design on underlying system architecture.
• Reason clearly about:
• entities
• relationships
• permissions
• rollups
• reporting logic
• status systems
• edge cases
• historical correctness
• Help define scalable operational primitives that can support future reporting, enterprise, and AI capabilities.
• Think carefully about migrations, operational trust, and backwards compatibility.

AI-Native Product Thinking

• Identify where AI genuinely creates leverage inside operational workflows.
• Design human-in-the-loop systems that preserve trust and correctness.
• Think beyond “chat interfaces” toward operational intelligence:
• prioritization
• anomaly detection
• workflow recommendations
• proactive alerts
• reporting assistance
• Understand where deterministic systems should remain authoritative versus where probabilistic AI adds value.

Execution & Delivery

• Sequence complex systems thoughtfully using thin slices and iterative rollout strategies.
• Identify minimal lovable versions that can ship quickly while supporting long-term architecture.
• De-risk major platform initiatives early through prototypes, operational testing, and customer validation.
• Partner closely with Engineering and Design to maintain quality while moving quickly.

Customer Discovery & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Conduct deep workflow discovery with grant professionals, operations teams, finance stakeholders, and leadership users.
• Translate messy operational pain into clear product opportunities.
• Work closely with:
• Engineering
• Design
• Customer Success
• Sales
• Data/BI
• Communicate complex systems and product decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

What We’re Looking For

Required

• 6–10+ years of product management experience in B2B SaaS.
• Experience owning complex operational or workflow-heavy products.
• Strong systems thinking and data model fluency.
• Demonstrated ability to ship iterative platform or workflow products.
• Excellent product judgment and prioritization skills.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication.

Strong Signals

• Experience with:
• tables/grids
• reporting systems
• workflow software
• operational tooling
• project management systems
• CRMs
• ERP-like systems
• financial or compliance workflows
• Experience balancing flexibility vs structure in operational products.
• Experience working on AI-powered workflow products.
• Strong collaboration with Engineering and Design on architecture-heavy initiatives.

What Success Looks Like

• Engineering, Design, and GTM teams consistently feel greater clarity after working with you.
• You proactively uncover important customer problems before they become roadmap requests.
• Customers describe Tracker as helping them feel more organized, operationally confident, and in control.
• You help the organization make smarter long-term platform decisions — not just ship near-term features.
• You develop a deep understanding of grant operations, workflows, reporting, and organizational coordination.
• You create strong product narratives that connect customer pain, systems design, workflows, and business outcomes.
• You bring structure to ambiguous spaces without oversimplifying them.

Compensation & Benefits

For US-based candidates, our target salary band is:

$200,000–$250,000 + equity

Compensation depends on level, experience, systems depth, and AI/product leadership capability.