Product Manager at Arly

About Arly

Arly builds software that helps youth-serving organizations manage programs, enrollment, attendance, payments, communications, and quality outcomes.

We are a lean, fast-moving team. Priorities evolve as we learn from customers and the market. We value curiosity, clarity, accountability, practical judgment, and people who take ownership without waiting to be asked.

The role

We’re hiring an execution-focused Product Manager to work directly under our Director of Product Management and closely with Engineering.

You will translate established product direction into clear, buildable work and keep that work moving from definition through production. You’ll own the details: requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, edge cases, delivery follow-through, and release validation. You will be expected to bring structure, judgment, and momentum to complex product work with limited day-to-day direction.

The right person enjoys bringing order to complexity. You ask questions when something is unclear, respectfully push teammates for answers and updates, and notice missing details before they become late-stage surprises.

What you’ll own

Product definition and initiative execution

• Take product direction from the Product Lead and develop it into clear product requirements, workflows, and decisions.
• Own a defined set of product initiative from early problem definition through launch and iteration.
• Write PRDs, user stories, acceptance criteria, and supporting documentation for complex initiatives.
• Define expected behavior across happy paths, edge cases, permissions, notifications, data, reporting, and operational workflows.
• Conduct targeted discovery with customers, Customer Success, Support, and internal stakeholders when needed to clarify the real problem.
• Make day-to-day product decisions within an agreed scope; escalate decisions that require strategic trade-offs.

Product-quality and release partnership

• Partner with Engineering early and often to ensure product solutions are practical, appropriately scoped, and ready to build.
• Review in-progress and completed work against the intended workflow and acceptance criteria.
• Identify gaps, inconsistencies, or usability issues before release. When required, escalate them clearly.
• Coordinate product readiness for launches, including support context, internal documentation, and known limitations.
• Monitor customer feedback, support trends, and product behavior after release to recommend follow-on improvements.

Customer insight and support inputs

• Distill customer requests into clear problem statements, separating bugs, small enhancements, workflow redesigns, and roadmap-scale opportunities.
• Build enough customer and domain context to recognize patterns across product feedback.
• Bring well-defined options, trade-offs, and recommendations to the Director of Product for prioritization.
• Help maintain a clear view of active product initiatives, upcoming work, assumptions, and unresolved decisions.
• Support occasional customer conversations when direct workflow context is needed.

Improve and elevate how the Product team works

• Strengthen product and engineering operating practices as the team grows.
• Use AI tools thoughtfully to improve research, requirements, story quality, and documentation.
• Identify gaps in product documentation and release readiness.
• Help create repeatable processes without adding unnecessary meetings or bureaucracy.

What success looks like

Within your first three months:

• The Director of Product can delegate initiatives with clear direction, and you can independently execute product definition that reflects the concept accurately, including the appropriate workflows, rules, edge cases, and principle decisions.
• Engineers consistently receive strong product context along with clear, buildable stories, and have few unresolved questions.
• Product requirements reflect complete real-world workflows
• Blockers, ownership gaps, and stale tickets are addressed proactively.
• There’s a demonstrable path from customer and support feedback to usable product improvements

What we’re looking for

• 3–5 years of experience as a Product Manager, Product Owner, Business Analyst, or in a comparable software product role, working directly with software engineers in an iterative process.
• Demonstrated experience independently defining product concepts and translating ambiguous needs into clear requirements, user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Strong judgment in balancing customer needs, usability, technical constraints, and speed.
• Excellent written communication, including PRDs, user stories, acceptance criteria, and decision documentation.
• Comfortable operating in a lean, fast-paced environment with changing priorities and incomplete information.
• Strong attention to detail, especially around edge cases, permissions, data, billing, reporting, and configurable workflows.
• Sharp instincts on when to make a decision, seek input, or escalate.
• Ability to manage shifting priorities without losing track of commitments.
• Experience using AI-assisted workflows and product development tools such as Linear, ChatPRD or similar platforms.

Helpful, but not required

• Experience with SaaS products involving payments, billing, registrations and enrollments, reporting, permissions, or configurable workflows.
• Experience supporting products used by schools, nonprofits, youth programs, or operationally complex organizations that serve diverse populations.
• Familiarity with product analytics, session replay, and customer-support platforms.
• Experience testing web and mobile applications.

How we work

• We move quickly, but not blindly. Ship useful, well-scoped work, then learn and iterate rather than waiting for a perfect first release.
• We take initiative. Come with a recommendation, a proposed path, and the context behind it—not just an open-ended question.
• We stay close to real customer workflows. Understand how people actually use the product before defining a solution; distinguish their underlying problem from the feature they request.
• We care about the details that make software work. Happy paths matter, but so do edge cases, confusing language, permissions, billing impacts, and what happens after launch.
• We communicate directly and respectfully. Raise risks early, make ownership clear, and follow through—especially when work is blocked or priorities change.
• We make learning reusable. Turn recurring questions and launch feedback into clearer product guidance, help content, and better workflows—not more meetings.
• We use modern tools to raise the bar. AI should improve the speed and quality of research, requirements, documentation, and problem-solving; judgment and ownership remain human responsibilities.

Perks & Benefits

• We welcome new ideas and allow you to impact the team immediately.
• Flexible work schedule
• 3 weeks of PTO
• Personal laptop.
• Health and wellness package.
• Remote work.