Product Manager

Kaizen Lab Inc.; Cambridge; Hybrid; CAD 95,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Spending Account

Pension plan with employer contributes

Professional development opportunities

Volunteer days

Flexible work model

Job summary

Payworks is seeking a Product Manager to own AI-first initiatives end-to-end within our payroll and HCM platform, serving 40,000+ Canadian SMBs with English and French support. This role emphasizes compliance-driven AI products with human-in-the-loop decision making.

You will build prototypes, sequence delivery, and collaborate with designers and engineers to ship releases with telemetry demonstrating measurable outcomes and adoption across functions.

Qualifications

• 5–8 years in B2B SaaS product management with measurable impact.
• Fluency with at least one AI-assisted prototyping tool and walk-throughs of prototypes.
• Strong discovery and delivery instincts; prefer prototypes and shared context over lengthy documentation.

Responsibilities

• Own an AI-first initiative end-to-end from discovery to adoption.
• Build prototypes and work closely with designers to raise the ceiling of what’s built.
• Design AI with trust: define confidence signals, review steps and accuracy history.
• Keep the pipeline ahead of engineering by breaking work into small, well-specified pieces.
• Prove success with telemetry showing real outcomes and driving roadmap items.
• Own adoption across Sales, Marketing, Support, Implementation and Finance.

Skills

B2B SaaS product management

AI prototyping

Discovery to delivery

Writing in English

Tools

Claude Code

Replit

Lovable

Cursor

Job description

Doing business to business, person to person. Payworks is a leading workforce management solutions provider and multi-year winner of the Canada’s Best Managed Companies program. We are proudly Canadian and committed to developing world-class products and providing a progressive workplace culture where Doing Right by People is our purpose.

With clients of all sizes and more than 700 employees, we currently have an exciting opportunity on our Product Management team for the right candidate. Because when it comes to great people, there’s always room for one more.

Salary range : $95,000-$120,000

DOING RIGHT BY PEOPLE – IT’S WHAT WE DO

The Product Manager owns one or more AI-first initiatives end-to-end — from discovery, through delivery, to measured adoption — inside Payworks' payroll and HCM platform. Payworks builds regulated software for 40,000+ Canadian SMBs across all 13 provincial and territorial jurisdictions, in English and French. This role turns that compliance depth into AI-assisted products Canadian businesses trust: software that monitors, flags, and guides payroll and HR work while keeping a human in the loop on every decision that carries regulatory weight.

The Product Manager works as an individual contributor inside our AI Product Development Lifecycle (AI PDLC), building working prototypes, sequencing delivery into valuable increments that our design partners help shape along the way, and shipping each release with the telemetry to prove it changed a user outcome. This role stays ahead of the development team at all times.

WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE PAYWORKS

• Comprehensive employer paid benefits, including a Health Spending Account, for you and your family and excellent pension plan with employer contributions.
• Plenty of professional development opportunities.
• Community-minded culture – Receive two paid days per year to volunteer and lots of opportunity to “Pay it Forward”.
• Time and flexibility to meet your needs – Hybrid work model with flexible work options, plus 3 weeks vacation to start, flex time and parental leave benefits.
• Cool perks – Annual Lifestyle Spending Account, fun office environment and events, and more!

DISCOVERING, PROTOTYPING, PROVING – IT’S WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Own an initiative end-to-end – You'll take one of our AI-first initiatives from first discovery conversation to measured adoption. You find the opportunity, make the business case in dollars, and decide what gets built.
• Build the prototype yourself – Here, the prototype is the spec. You'll build working prototypes in Claude Code and our designers join you as co-creators to raise the ceiling on what you've made. Each prototype is complemented by a product brief outlining business context, non-functional requirements and business logic.
• Design AI that people actually trust – Our products monitor, flag and guide, but they never make the call on their own. You'll design the confidence signals, review steps and accuracy history that move a payroll practitioner from watching the AI to relying on it.
• Keep the pipeline ahead of the team – You'll break the work into small, well-specified pieces and stay a step ahead of engineering, partnering closely with Business Analysts and developers so they can build straight from your prototype.
• Prove it worked – Every release ships with the measures built in to show whether it changed a real outcome, and every roadmap item traces back to one. The work doesn't end at launch
• Own adoption, not just launch – Getting the product used is your deliverable too. You'll work with Sales, Marketing, Support, Implementation and Finance on positioning, launch materials, and the case for why clients should trust it.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO SUCCEED

• 5–8 years in B2B SaaS product management, including products you shipped that measurably changed something for users or the business.
• Fluency with at least one AI-assisted prototyping tool (Claude Code, Replit, Lovable, Cursor or equivalent), plus prototypes you can walk us through.
• Sharp discovery and delivery instincts: you prioritize by risk rather than convenience, and you're happy working from prototypes and shared context instead of requirement documents.
• Comfort with measurement: you instrument what you ship and tell leading indicators from lagging.
• Sound judgment in ambiguity, and the ownership to carry deliverables, timelines and quality through every release.
• Clear, declarative writing in English, and a collaborative style that treats other teams as co-creators rather than requesters.
• An appetite for change: our operating model is still evolving, and you'll pick up new tools and methods as you go.

Considered an asset

• Canadian payroll or HCM experience, or product work in another regulated space like fintech, health, insurance or security.
• You've shipped an AI or ML product in production, including work on quality, evaluation or trust design.
• Comfort working in French, since we serve clients and meet payroll compliance requirements in both official languages (EN/FR).

We are proud to support a Flexible Work Plan that recognizes the diverse needs and lifestyles of our people. The Product Manager has the option to work fully from the Payworks office in Cambridge or on a hybrid work model, working in the office at least three (3) days a week. Some travel may be required.

Payworks is committed to providing an inclusive, accessible environment, and collaborating with employees, clients and guests to identify and effectively remove barriers, in a manner that respects the principles of independence, dignity, integration, reasonable accommodation and equal opportunity. Payworks welcomes and encourages applications from all persons. Individuals applying for employment with Payworks may request accommodations at all stages of recruitment and employment from Human Resources.

Employees at Payworks’ come from different backgrounds, and we celebrate those differences. We are looking for the best candidate for this opportunity, but do not expect applicants to meet every qualification in order to be considered.

We may use AI-assisted tools for organization, sorting, and workflow management — however, we pride ourselves on a high-touch, human-centered process.

This posting is for an existing vacancy within our team.