Specialism: Research & Development

Project: Our client is an innovation network of more than 600 teams, projects, and movements dedicated to advancing breakthroughs in computing, with decentralization serving as both a guiding ethos and operational framework. They have been behind core technologies powering the decentralized web—such as IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and IPLD—while also expanding into fields like neurotech, AI, and virtual reality. To further this mission, they provide infrastructure, programs, and tools that foster collaboration and growth, focusing on digital human rights, governance, safe AI, and next-generation technologies. Within this structure, one product team is building a unified, open-source platform that connects members, teams, and projects through directories, event and gathering management, and forums, with a growing emphasis on modularization to support a thriving contributor ecosystem and richer collaborative tools.

Location: Remote

Role Detail: We are searching for a Product Manager to lead the modularization of a unified software platform that powers collaboration across a global innovation network. This role will define the strategy, interfaces, and contributor experience that enable teams and partners to build high-quality modules at scale. You will oversee the full lifecycle of distributed product scaling, from designing APIs, SDKs, and plugin frameworks to establishing governance structures and quality gates that ensure cohesion and reliability. Your first priority will be driving a pilot module in partnership with another team, creating the foundation and best practices for repeatable, scalable module development. Working closely with engineering, design, and contributors across the network, you will balance platform stability with developer velocity, set standards for performance, security, and accessibility, and foster an ecosystem of collaboration through clear workflows, documentation, and continuous feedback loops.

Requirements:

• 10+ years of product management experience, including 5+ years building platforms or ecosystem products that support multi-team or third-party development
• Proven track record of shipping modular or plugin-based consumer products in open source (e.g., GitLab, Mattermost, LibreOffice, Rocket.chat, Flarum, Lemmy, Lesswrong, or similar)
• Experience defining and scaling contributor workflows such as SDKs, extension APIs, interface contracts, documentation, and community contribution practices
• Success leading pilots that grow into repeatable frameworks for distributed product development
• Background working with both internal teams and external vendors or dev shops to deliver production-grade modules
• Ability to balance user experience cohesion with contributions from multiple teams in open ecosystems
• Strong knowledge of product architecture concepts including authentication, permissions and feature flags, routing, search, notifications, telemetry, and experimentation
• Skilled in establishing acceptance criteria and governance frameworks to preserve quality across distributed contributors
• Technical depth to design APIs, manage versioning, set performance budgets, and ensure observability
• Excellent written communication for contributor documentation and stakeholder alignment
• Data-driven decision-making using metrics like contributor funnels, feature adoption, and ecosystem health
• Strong collaboration skills to align diverse stakeholders while empowering independent team contributions
• Systems thinker who designs for reuse, composability, and long-term maintainability
• Pragmatic and delivery-focused, using pilots to validate and strengthen interfaces
• Passionate about maintaining UX cohesion and quality while remaining empathetic to contributor needs
• Comfortable operating transparently in open forums and distributed teams
• Motivated by ecosystem building, with a drive to enable others to deliver at scale