Product Manager

⚠️ Please read first

• This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco (Presidio) - we work from the office 5 days a week.

• You must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before starting.

• We require US work authorization, but are open to O-1 or J-1 visa sponsorship for exceptional candidates.
  
  

About Sauna by Wordware

Most AI products hand you a coworker on day one and hope you trust it. Sauna is the coworker you raise: it starts by learning how you work, earns autonomy task by task, and ends up running hours of work on its own while you keep taste, review, and the final say. Wordware is the ~20-person team behind it, backed by Spark Capital, Felicis, and Y Combinator with a $30M seed, the largest in YC history. We build from a San Francisco office in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, and we work absurdly hard because we can see and feel the outcome every day.

About the Role:

We're hiring a Product Manager to join Sauna early. We're building the first multiplayer AI brain: a fleet of agents that runs in the background, learns your context across sessions, and comes back when the work is done. Sauna runs on Sauna; we use the product we're building, every day. You'll prototype before you spec, sit in user sessions every week, push features from first sketch to launch post. One-week sprints, weekly demos on Friday. If you do it well, you're one of the best PMs in AI in three years. You'll report to our Head of Product.

Heads-up: while we don't use seniority titles at Wordware, this role is intended for builders 0-5 years out of school. Slope over tenure. Ex-founders, growth leads, APMs ready to leave big companies, strategy/consulting backgrounds with an AI side project, and engineers with a product instinct all fit.

What You'll Do:

You'll do whatever the week needs to move the product forward. Everyone ships.

• Stand up working prototypes before an engineer touches the problem

• Edit one-pagers, push them through to ship, hold the bar on quality

• Sit in 15-20 user sessions a week, write up the patterns, share them with the team

• Run evals on new chat flows and decide whether they ship

• Draft launch posts and external comms for new features

• Spend time in the office helping customers get unstuck

• Vibe-design competing versions of screens to settle design arguments

• Whatever else the week demands

Who You Are:

Minimum:

This role demands someone who ships fast, has taste, and earns respect by doing the work.

• Ship in a day, not scope for two weeks. Prototype first.

• Have shipped something real and be able to name the tradeoff you made.

• Build with AI every day. Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, v0, Sauna. You have opinions about what's working and what's broken.

• Default to shipping the high-leverage thing now, not exploring for months.

• Hold your own with anyone in the room. Earn respect by doing the work, not by claiming authority.

• Write well. Sharp, specific, opinionated. Not "PM polished".

• Want to be the best at what you do.

Bonus (but not required):

• Founded or co-founded a company (success or failure, both count)

• Run product, growth, or self-serve at a fast-growing startup

• Strategy or consulting background with an AI side project under your belt

• Engineering background and a product instinct pulling you toward this seat

• Published writing or talks about product, AI, or building

• A track record of vibe-coding or prototyping that gets you to working software faster than your peers

Compensation & Benefits:

Base salary: $140K–$220K + meaningful early-stage equity + health, dental, 401(k), considerable PTO, gym budget, lunch.

The Process:

We keep our process simple. Exceptional candidates go from first touch to offer within 2 weeks.

1. Application: Submit your resume and answer a few short questions.

2. 15-minute intro call: Quick check to align on location, motivation, and logistics. If it's a go, we move fast from here.

3. Product exercise: Prototype or tear down a real Wordware problem. We look for taste, speed, and judgment.

4. Final conversation: We answer your questions and scope out the work trial.

5. Work trial: Paid, in person, usually a few days to two weeks. You work on a real project with us. See how we work, see if it fits, both sides.