Product Manager

Job Description

We’re the team behind Matrix—the leading project for secure, open decentralised communication and Element— the all-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Our mission is to make messaging as open as email— allowing everyone to choose where their data is hosted, enjoy private conversations and ultimately be in control of their own communication.

We build open alternatives to apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Teams & more. Our early adopters include The French Government, and open source communities like Mozilla, KDE, GNOME and Wikimedia, while we’re working towards gaining traction in personal messaging.

We build things for everyone, and we know we can’t succeed without a diverse team. Our hiring process is designed to be respectful and give candidates the best chance to show us what you can do. If we ever fall down on this, please let us know.

The Role

We’re looking for a talented Product Manager to join the team, working closely with our VP of Product and other senior stakeholders, while supporting cross-functional product teams. You’ll be tasked with improving the functionality and value of our products to help democratise proven, powerful technology to benefit everyone.We’re interested in talking to people with a broad range of experience— we care most about your skills, spirit, and ability to contribute.

Day to day, you’ll:

• Champion the user, prioritising above all else that our apps are fit for purpose and work delightfully for our end users
• Test ideas with users, and measure results on production to ensure we’re achieving our goals
• Ensure we’re building the right things, by using a mixture of research, analysis and product sense
• Spearhead new features and concepts which balance vision, craft, speed and potential
• Iterate on existing features and implementations to ensure they’re usable by everyone and accessible to all
• Work closely with our Product, Sales, Professional Services teams and other senior stakeholders to better understand the needs and wants of our diverse userbase— using this to help inform our product roadmap
• Use a mix of research and innate nous to prioritise, plan and scope product features
• Maintain backlogs, stack ranking opportunity cost with impact, to ensure we’re always reaching for the most impactful things
• Be a ‘partner in crime’ for all of product, design and engineering in cross-functional product teams to ideate, kickstart and drive things to the finish line
• Validate ideas and opportunities, turning opinions into data
• Set key metrics, tracking & monitoring them with teams and stakeholders
• Drive product thinking across the company, maximising the impact of all decision making
• Identify our users’ needs before they do— you care just as much about what our users don’t tell us than what they do

Requirements

You might be a good fit if…

• You have a strong track record of shipping products which users love, with bonus points for previously working on messaging products, consumer-facing SaaS platforms or open source technologies
• You have experience using both quantitative and qualitative research methods and know when to reach for which
• You have experience with working with other stakeholders and departments from product marketing, to sales and support
• You collaborate extremely well cross-functionally— understanding how to steer disciplines like engineering, design, product, sales and support to work together towards strategic objectives
• You have experience shipping early and often, working closely with technical leads and delivery managers
• You have technical aptitude. While this isn’t an engineering role, you should be able to untangle technical concepts and inform discussions rooted in technically complex problems.
• You have top-notch organisation and multi-tasking skills, used to meet tight deadlines and handle multiple projects
• You’re equally excited to work on both large projects and addressing smaller issues & nags which add up to a greater sum of impact than their individual parts
• You’re obsessed with raising the quality bar, and the idea of taking proven & powerful technology to rid
• You have at least 3+ years of proving your skills in your craft

Why this role?

Benefits

Our general approach is to treat people like adults and acknowledge that by being flexible we create an environment for people to do their best work. For more details here is our manifesto. That said specific points that differentiate us include:

• Since our technology is relevant to anything that requires real-time comms, the role provides exposure to a wide range of domains from web and app dev through to VR, VoIP and IoT.
• Generous holiday allowance, private healthcare for you and your family and opportunities for development and progression as we scale.
• Family friendly environment; many of the team have small children and we look to accommodate that as best we can.
• People tend to stay with the company for a long time, we take this as a sign that we have a cohesive, supportive culture, that we have engaging challenging work and that people can develop their skills and careers here for the long term.

Element does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, colour, religion, age, national origin, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other reason prohibited by law in provision of employment opportunities and benefits.