Senior/Staff Product Manager (AI Agents)

**January** Senior/Staff Product Manager (AI Agents); $185K – $244K + Equity; New York City

**About Company** At January, we're rebuilding one of the most broken parts of consumer finance: what happens after someone falls behind on debt. Our autonomous, compliant collections platform works directly for creditors, using data and AI to personalize outreach and offer consumers clearer, more compassionate ways to resolve what they owe. Creditors recover more effectively with less risk; consumers get dignity and control during a distressing situation.

January has serviced $20B+ in debt and engaged 20M+ consumers. We outperform traditional agencies by 30%+ for 80%+ of our clients, consumer satisfaction is ~50% higher than at the largest banks, and the product is roughly 300x more efficient than traditional collection agencies. Customers like Affirm and LendingClub stay and expand. We're now growing beyond late-stage debt collection into a multi-product platform, backed by Series B funding, with ~100+ people working out of Nolita, NYC.

**About the Role** We're building AI agents that don't just assist — they act. Autonomously. At scale. Across the most consequential moments in our product. This role owns the strategy, quality, and business impact of that system — and defines how the entire company builds with AI going forward. You'll architect how AI agents reason, decide, and execute across complex workflows — then build the systems that make them reliable, measurable, and continuously improving. You'll pressure-test our assumptions about what agents can become, bring product rigor to a domain where we've been moving fast without it, and set the standard other PMs learn from. We have early traction and strong conviction. What we need is a staff PM who turns that into a platform — one that expands what AI agents can own, accelerates how fast we ship them, and fundamentally changes our unit economics.

**Responsibilities** - The AI agent strategy. You own the roadmap. Not a feature backlog — a sequenced, opinionated strategy tied directly to business outcomes. You'll decide what we build, what we buy, and when we switch vendors as the landscape shifts. You'll identify product, technical, and regulatory constraints 6–12 months out and architect around them before they become blockers. Product, Engineering, Operations, and GTM leadership will look to you as a sparring partner, someone who challenges assumptions and pushes the engagement strategy to be more ambitious through AI agents. - Agent quality and the pace of iteration. You'll define what "good" looks like for our AI agents across prompt engineering, conversation design, and real-world performance, and build the evaluation frameworks to measure it. You own the full agent UX: conversation flows, authentication, multi-topic handling, all designed for user trust and measurable conversion outcomes. You'll partner with Legal and Compliance to build patterns that keep us compliant without slowing us down. - Revenue impact. You'll prioritize the campaigns and workflows that maximize operational efficiency while driving incremental revenue. You'll partner with GTM to expand adoption across segments and turn agent performance into top-line growth. - How the company builds with AI — beyond this role. You'll create the playbooks, evaluation frameworks, prompt engineering standards, vendor assessment criteria, that let other PMs ship AI features without you in the room. You'll build organizational AI fluency across Operations, GTM, Legal, and leadership so the company makes better decisions about where AI fits.

**Required Skills** A. 8+ years of product management experience, including AI/LLM-powered products (e.g., conversational AI, agents) B. Experience with prompt engineering, LLM evaluation frameworks, or conversation design C. Experience working with system architecture and API design D. Experience building and launching new products or features

**Bonus Skills** - Experience building conversational AI at scale at a high-growth company - Familiarity with AI agent platforms and their trade-offs - Experience coaching other PMs on AI best practices - Track record of strategic build-vs-buy decisions for AI infrastructure - Experience shipping in ambiguous, rapidly evolving technical domains

**Ideal Background** - AI Strategy: Defines compelling product vision and translates it into sequenced, high‑conviction bets. Makes principled trade‑offs that others adopt as decision frameworks. - AI/LLM Product Craft: Deep product intuition for building with LLMs, conversation design, prompt engineering, evaluation. Stays ahead of the landscape and translates shifts into product decisions before the market catches up. - Technical Depth: Partners with engineering on infrastructure and architecture trade‑offs. Reasons about latency, cost, API design, and observability at the level engineers respect. - Analytical Rigor: Defines what "good" looks like for AI systems through quantitative and qualitative evaluation. Structures experiments that accelerate learning. - Truth‑Seeking: Pressure‑tests assumptions, including your own. Seeks disconfirming evidence before committing. Delivers uncomfortable truths with clarity. - Collaboration & Influence: Drives alignment across Product, Engineering, Legal, Operations, GTM, and clients. Translates complex AI concepts for diverse audiences. - Ownership & Velocity: Takes on ambiguous problems before being asked. Moves fast with incomplete information. Ships and iterates rather than perfecting. - **This is going to have to be someone from a company with some degree of a good reputation in AI.**

**Logistical Info** - Location: New York City, New York office - Compensation: $185K – $244K + Equity - **Other:** Open to relocation for strong non-NYC candidates (must relocate within 60 days); visa transfers by default (not new visas), case-by-case discussion

**Example Candidates** TBA

**Green Flags** - AI-agent / LLM product depth — has shipped autonomous-agent or conversational-AI products (not general/growth PM). - Startup / scrappy-stage pedigree with a standout ("spike") on at least one dimension. - Individual ownership with quantified, durable outcomes; diagnoses root cause before prescribing. - Writes well and structures thinking on paper (writing-first culture); candor — gives direct feedback early. - Specific, personal reason for January (articulated unprompted). **Red Flags** - Growth / lifecycle / general-SaaS PM background without demonstrated AI-agent / LLM product depth. - Below the tenure/level bar; no startup or scrappy-stage experience. - Team-scoped / "we"-framed impact that hides individual contribution. - Intuition over evidence — no root-cause diagnosis or metrics.

**Interview Process** - Recruiter Screen - Hiring Manager Screen - Case Study/Panel - Onsite Interviews - Culture/CEO Interview - Offer