Product Manager, Web3 Core Protocols

About Protocol Labs Protocol Labs drives breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. Protocol Labs is a product-development lab, but behind the protocols and tools we build, behind the research and implementations, are passionate people, teammates, and community members. Most teams in the Protocol Labs Network are fully distributed and work remotely around the world. Engineers, researchers, and operators work in the open to improve the internet — humanity's most important technology — as we explore new advances at the intersection of many exciting fields (crypto, networks, distributed systems) and cultures (startups, research, open-source, distributed work). Web3 is the next generation of the internet that aims to create a fairer and more decentralized web. Protocol Labs aims to be at the forefront of this generational shift by researching, building, and productizing protocols to drive breakthroughs in computing and push humanity forward. We are actively hiring Product Managers who can help us roadmap future directions and achieve product-market fit for our protocols, including IPLD, libp2p, IPFS, and Filecoin, as well as new protocols and systems over time. The success of these protocols depends on their ability to attract developers from all industries, all over the world, to build world-class tooling and applications that appeal to global audiences. The Product Manager, Decentralized Protocols (Protocol PM, for short) works closely with our team of world-class distributed systems and protocol engineers to synthesize and prioritize the needs of our stakeholders, create actionable product roadmaps, design and build technical systems with tech leads and engineering teams and set longer-term protocol and product strategy. Protocol PMs deeply empathize with developers as users, with a level of creativity to meet their needs that go beyond current engineering paradigms. They are able to develop a broad and deep understanding of our protocols that enables them to reason about the wide-ranging and long-term implications of lower-level technical design decisions. They are able to effectively generate buy-in with users, tech leads, and other stakeholders. Protocol PMs are naturally collaborative and are excellent communicators. They help set the culture and direction for large protocol engineering teams. Their work is instrumental in ensuring that our web3 protocols become the foundation of the internet going forward. As a Product Manager for Decentralized Protocols, you will... - Develop a deep understanding of user needs, and translate these needs into actionable product requirements for protocol engineering and protocol research teams - Be the voice of our current and future users in technical discussions, understanding the implications of various technical tradeoffs, and ultimately helping to make decisions that will deliver a stellar user experience and achieve our long-term protocol/product goals - Work closely with technical leads to design systems that set our protocols on an excellent trajectory for future adoption and success - Create actionable roadmaps for engineering teams that span across the creation of new protocols, improvement of existing protocols, building developer-oriented products and APIs, and creating excellent documentation - Work closely with engineering managers and technical leads to manage the team responsible for executing these roadmaps - Coordinate with protocol researchers, developer tooling projects, application developers, and other builders across the ecosystem to develop core protocol upgrades and other parts of the product roadmap - Collaborate seamlessly and cross-functionally with users, engineering, documentation, other product teams, and product marketing teams - Clearly and effectively communicate roadmaps and progress to the rest of Protocol Labs and the broader web3 ecosystem You may be a fit for this role if you... - Have experience managing technical software products from conception to launch, especially for those using the nascent technology - Have built complex systems and/or highly technical products at scale, either as an engineer or a product manager - Have computer science or software engineering experience that you have drawn upon in future leadership roles, especially as a technical lead, product owner, technical product manager, or founder - Have experience successfully building developer products, often being the voice of the user through interviews, user stories, technical requirements, and user testing - Enjoy collaborating closely with engineers, as well as broader cross-functional teams - Are hyper detail-oriented, extremely organized, and pride yourself on your ability to structure large, ambiguous systems into actionable, tractable pieces - Have strong written and verbal communication skills with a talent for precise articulations of customer problems - Thrive in fast-moving work environments, do whatever it takes to make your team successful, and are not afraid to roll up your sleeves to get the job done Bonus Points - Have product management experience within crypto projects, networks, or low-level systems - Have experience as a startup founder for software or technical companies - Made contributions to open-source software projects - Are self-taught in some field, and consider yourself a voracious learner - Have a mix of technical and business background/education (e.g., CS undergrad and MBA, engineering and product management experience, etc.) #LI-MT1 #LI-REMOTE What’s it like to work at Protocol Labs? Protocol Labs' mission is to improve humanity’s most important technology, the Internet. We build protocols, systems, and tools to improve how it works. Today, we are focused on how we store, locate, and move information. Our projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and more. As a distributed team, we hire anywhere in the world, and at various levels of experience (entry, senior, staff). We look for people with unique perspectives and diverse backgrounds. We have a great benefits package, including parental leave, contributions to your retirement, competitive pay, and unlimited time off. For U.S.-based employees, we also provide platinum-level health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family. If you’re passionate about the future of computing and a more democratized internet, we want to talk to you.