Staff Product Manager
The Staff Product Manager is Orion's most senior individual contributor track in product. This is a player-coach role: a Staff PM raises the bar through their own craft — shipping the hardest problems themselves, modeling AI-native product development, and actively mentoring a small group of peer PMs — without carrying direct reports. Staff PMs sit directly under a GM, signaling that builders have a first-class path to the most senior levels of product leadership.
Essential Functions of the Job
- Own the highest-leverage, ambiguous, or hardest-to-solve problems in the pillar — the platform-level bets and the initiatives where the outcome matters most
- Personally ship the work: PRDs, prototypes, shipped features, customer research synthesis, and post-launch analyses — at the quality bar the rest of the team calibrates against
- Build and deploy AI-native workflows: prototype in AI coding tools, run discovery and synthesis through LLMs, ship internal agents that eliminate repetitive work, and publish those workflows as team standards
- Partner with engineering leadership on technical direction for the pillar — data contracts, AI/model integration decisions, platform investments
- Translate GM-level strategy into a crisp, opinionated product vision for the pillar; set the product quality bar the team works against
- Run end-to-end discovery: customer interviews, data analysis, competitive research, opportunity sizing — AI-accelerated at every stage
- Lead cross-pillar initiatives that touch more than one product, where a senior IC perspective is more valuable than a management handoff
- Represent the pillar in customer executive conversations, industry forums, and cross-functional executive reviews
Player-Coach Responsibilities (no direct reports)
- Mentor 3–6 peer PMs through weekly 1:1s, PRD reviews, shadowing on discovery calls, and pair-shipping on hard problems
- Raise the team's AI fluency: teach AI-native workflows, maintain the pillar's prompt and agent library, review AI-generated artifacts for quality
- Own the hiring bar for the pillar's PM hires; lead technical interview loops and make hire/no-hire calls alongside the GM
- Be the person peers escalate to when stuck — unblock them and make the call on hard tradeoffs
- Model operating norms (documentation, async comms, meeting hygiene) that keep the team flat and fast
Skills
- Proven track record of shipping successful products at senior IC level
- Deep, demonstrable AI fluency — has built features powered by LLMs, ships prototypes in modern AI coding tools, understands eval frameworks, cost tradeoffs, and agent architectures; this is not "has used ChatGPT"
- Strong technical instincts — reads code, writes SQL, works fluently with APIs, holds substantive conversations with senior engineers
- World-class written communication; writes the clearest PRD in the room
- Mastery of discovery craft — customer interviews, competitive teardowns, data analysis, synthesis
- Evidence of raising the bar for teammates (mentorship outcomes, artifacts adopted as team standards, successful hires championed)
- Comfort with ambiguity and a strong bias to ship
Education & Experience
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience
- 10+ years in product management or product engineering, with clear evidence of increasing scope and complexity
- At least one tour in a heavily AI-forward or technically deep product role
KPIs
- Pillar outcomes directly driven (revenue, retention, activation, or NPS on owned surfaces) — targets set with GM; trend positive QoQ
- AI leverage index (features shipped per engineer on the pillar) — top quartile vs. company benchmark
- Peer PM growth — ≥ 2 mentees per year with documented scope expansion, promotion, or new surface ownership
- Hiring bar — offers extended by this Staff PM that accept and are performing well at the 12-month mark — ≥ 80%
- Artifacts adopted — PRDs, prompts, agents, or frameworks built by this PM and adopted by other PMs on the team — ≥ 4 per year
- Customer-evidenced initiatives — ≥ 80% of work led has pre-launch validated customer evidence
Recommended Skills:
Salary Range:
$123,491.00 - $196,279.00
The pay listed in this posting indicates the estimated pay at the time of this posting; however, may vary depending on geographic location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. In addition, Orion offers a competitive benefits package which includes health, dental, vision, and disability coverage on day one, 401(k) plan with employer match, paid parental leave, pet benefits including pawternity leave and pet insurance, student loan repayment and more.
About Us
At Orion, we achieve our best work when we support one another, staying personally accountable to each other and the clients we serve. We create a welcoming environment where everyone is respected, valued, and heard. Our commitment to create raving fans ensures we consistently exceed client expectations. Thinking differently is in our DNA—we innovate always, push boundaries, and reject the status quo to deliver transformative outcomes. Together, we support one another and see it through to success, driving our collective achievements and those of our clients.
