Staff / Principal Product Manager

Description

Inkitt is building the Disney of the 21st Century, standing at the forefront of technology and entertainment. Leveraging AI and predictive algorithms, Inkitt discovers unknown stories and turns them into blockbuster hits, producing a new $1M ebook every 7 days and selling directly to consumers through its Inkitt Galatea app. Bestsellers are then translated onto the screen through Inkitt CandyJar , the 1 US-based microdrama platform with billions of episodes streamed to date. Inkitt has become the 11th most bestseller-generating publisher in the world, boasting a 40x higher hit-rate than traditional publishers. Backed by some of the top VC’s such as: Khosla, Kleiner Perkins, and NEA Ventures, our recent expansion into Ironblood, the first AI Native streaming platform for action and adventure, is only the beginning of our journey to becoming the next-gen entertainment powerhouse.

Which product you'll own

We run four consumer products and we are hiring product managers for all of them.

Galatea — serialized fiction, millions of readers, coins and subscription

CandyJar — the 1 US-based microdrama platform, billions of episodes streamed

Ironblood — our new AI-native streaming platform for action and adventure

Inkitt — the writing and discovery platform underneath all of it

We decide which one you own at the point you start, not at the point you apply. When you join, we look at where the largest metric gap is across the portfolio and put you there. As the team grows, areas get reshuffled — people move to where the biggest problem is.

We say this plainly because at this level it is the most common reason a hire does not work out. If you need to own one named domain indefinitely, or your value depends on a particular surface staying yours, this will frustrate you.

Responsibilities

• Own a product line end to end, including the revenue attached to it
• Set the idea agenda for your area and defend it with numbers
• Build rigorous business cases for anything substantial, and be right often enough that the bar keeps rising
• Drive work through spec, design, engineering, QA and launch at a cadence most companies would consider unreasonable
• Design and run experiments, ramp them on your own judgement, and report results honestly including failures
• Raise the standard of product thinking around you — your pitches, specs and post-mortems become the reference the rest of the team works from
• Hit the impact you predicted
• What You'll Bring:
• 8+ years of professional experience , with deep, demonstrable ownership of consumer product where users pay directly and often. We measure years on the job, not years holding a particular title.
• You are useful in week two. You have built and owned the kind of surface this portfolio needs — paywalls, pricing, coins and offers, retention loops, onboarding — at real scale, and can start contributing before you have been fully onboarded.
• Exceptional analytical ability. Advanced SQL. You build your own models and you check other people’s.
• A track record of revenue impact you can quantify , with the methodology behind it.
• Comfort operating as a hands-on individual contributor. This seat has no direct reports.
• Based in San Francisco. This role is five days a week onsite.
• Nice to have: free-to-play games, serialized fiction, short-form video or audio; coins, virtual currency, offer design or live operations; a founder or first-employee stint.
• Who We Are Looking For:
• Autonomous on execution, collaborative on direction
• Generates ideas rather than waiting for them
• Brings solutions instead of problems
• Data driven — and does the analysis themselves
• Quick to action
• Takes direct feedback well, gives it directly, and does not need to be handled
• Comfortable being measured against their own forecast
• Happy to be moved to wherever the biggest problem is
• Have lots of fun building a generational AI x Entertainment company
• What We'll Offer:
• 401k plan, designed to help you save for the future
• Health benefits tailored to your needs, including medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Professional coaching for everyone
• Team-building events, including our annual Tulum trip
• Unlimited access to our Galatea app and CandyJar app.
• Unlimited budget for self-development books
• Charity donation of your choice at your one year anniversary
• Free lunch in office everyday
• Class Pass membership for US based employee and gym access for Berlin employees
• Dog-friendly offices in Berlin and San Francisco
• At Inkitt, we strive to build a company culture and provide employment opportunities based on diversity and inclusion. We believe every author should have an equal opportunity to succeed, as should our team members. As a growing team from 20+ countries, we welcome everyone to apply.
• We look forward to hearing from you!
• Check out our Careers Blog
• Follow us on Instagram & LinkedIn!

Conditions

This role works differently from most senior product jobs, and the difference is the single biggest predictor of whether someone succeeds here.

Ali, our founder and CEO, sets company priorities. You own the ideas. You will spend part of every day researching competitors, the industry and our users to generate new feature ideas, and you will keep a live Top 3 list of the highest-impact ideas for your area — a new idea only enters by beating one already on it.

You pitch on a single slide with an impact calculation attached. Anything over a week of engineering needs a methodical business case demonstrating ROI. Ali rejects ideas that will not move the number enough to justify the build, and he does so often. The loop is pitch, get rejected, sharpen, re-pitch — continuously, alongside delivery.

Once approved, you own execution outright, including release and A/B ramping. Four weeks after launch, every feature is reviewed against the impact you predicted before you built it. You cannot inflate a forecast to win approval, because the forecast becomes your scorecard.

Your performance is measured on two things: how often you beat your own Top 3, and the realised impact of what you ship.

This is not a role where a roadmap is handed to you and you are judged on delivering it. If that is the job you are looking for, this will frustrate you, and we would rather you knew now.