Associate Product Manager (Contracting/Action Processing)

Impact; Santa Barbara (CA); On-site; USD 85,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance

Lunch Thursdays (office catering)

401(k)

Flexible PTO

RSUs

Coursera access

Parental leave

Tech stipend

Internet stipend

Job summary

impact.com is seeking an Associate Product Manager for the Action Processing and Contracting squad to shape requirements and drive delivery in a data-heavy domain.

You’ll partner with a Senior PM and Engineering, writing crisp requirements, and growing ownership with structured coaching. Time-to-value is emphasized through fast, principled scoping and execution.

Qualifications

• Early-career product experience or equivalent
• Experience drafting structured requirements in Markdown (user stories, acceptance criteria)
• Comfort working with engineers and designers in an agile delivery environment
• Strong written and verbal communication to turn ambiguous asks into structured requirements
• Ability to run basic analyses from source data and inform decisions
• Experience using AI tools in real work to accelerate drafting and analysis

Responsibilities

• Own focused feature slices with coaching, expanding scope as you prove execution
• Drive AP and Contracting initiatives (terms, lists, audience rules, workflows)
• Write customer/business requirements engineers can build from without ambiguity
• Partner with Engineering to surface risks, blockers, acceptance gaps
• Write/iterate Markdown requirements alongside the GitHub context
• Keep a healthy backlog and align with Product/Engineering leads

Skills

Early-career PM

Engineering degree

Technical orientation

AI tools

Requirements drafting

Execution bias

Markdown requirements

Clear communication

Agile delivery

Systems fluency

Organization

Curiosity/coachability

Customer empathy

Education

Engineering or CS degree

Tools

GitHub context

Job description

About impact.com

impact.com is the world’s leading commerce partnership marketing platform, transforming the way businesses grow by enabling them to discover, manage, and scale partnerships across the entire customer journey. From affiliates and influencers to content publishers, brand ambassadors, and customer advocates, impact.com empowers brands to drive trusted, performance-based growth through authentic relationships. Its award-winning products Performance (affiliate), Creator (influencer), and Advocate (customer referral) unify every type of partner into one integrated platform. As consumers increasingly rely on recommendations from people and communities they trust, impact.com helps brands show up where it matters most. Today, over 5,000 global brands rely on impact.com to power millions of partnerships that deliver measurable business results.

Your Role at impact.com

We’re hiring a technical Associate Product Manager for the Action Processing (AP) and Contracting Squad — one of impact.com’s most foundational domains: how brands and partners define terms, commissions, lists, and contract workflows that power revenue on the platform.

You’ll partner closely with a Senior Product Manager and Engineering to ship customer value in a complex, data-heavy domain. This is not a “project coordinator” APM role. You’ll write crisp requirements fast, dig into how systems behave, use AI tools as part of how you work, and grow ownership quickly under structured coaching. Relative to a Product Manager role, the emphasis here is strong execution and learning velocity on a focused scope — with ownership and outcome accountability expanding as you prove out.

Time to value matters. Shape usable Markdown requirements quickly with AI. Speed with rigor is the bar.

Success looks like: clear requirements with short cycle time from ask → draft → eng-ready, strong eng partnership, reliable delivery on your slice, and rising fluency in how Contracting and Action Processing connect to other domains.

What You'll Do:

You’ll own focused feature slices with coaching from your Senior PM, with scope expanding as you prove out execution and judgment.

Feature execution & delivery

• Drive feature development for Action Processing (AP) and Contracting Squad initiatives (e.g. terms/commission behaviors, list and audience rules, contract workflows, and customer-driven requests).


• Write customer and business requirements (user stories, use cases, acceptance criteria) that engineers can build from without ambiguity.


• Partner with Engineering through build: surface risks, blockers, and acceptance gaps early.


• Write and iterate Markdown requirements that live adjacent to the GitHub repo (alongside eng context), and co‑lead pre‑spec and spec reviews — with short time from ambiguous ask to eng‑ready draft.

Technical fluency & AI-native working

• Build working understanding of how AP and Contracting systems behave: data flows, edge cases, dependencies, and failure modes.


• Use AI tools and agents as part of your daily craft to compress cycle time — drafting specs, synthesizing research, exploring prototypes, testing edge cases, and accelerating analysis — then validate outputs yourself. The point is faster time to a good requirement, not longer polish loops.


• Get comfortable reading technical context (APIs, schemas, logs, tickets, eng design notes) enough to ask sharp questions and write better requirements.


• Protect engineering focus: clear definition of ready, early pushback on late scope changes, and avoiding rework from unclear requirements.

Squad partnership & operational excellence

• Keep a clear, healthy backlog for your scope (ticket clarity, prioritization hygiene, meeting facilitation, and request triage).


• Sequence and clarify work in partnership with your Senior PM and Engineering leads.


• Facilitate working sessions with Engineering, Design, Customer Success / Technical Services, and adjacent PMs.


• Hold regular alignment touchpoints with Product and Engineering leads to keep priorities clear.

Roadmap, go‑to‑market & stakeholders

• Contribute to clear communication of the squad’s planned roadmap within your scope.


• Partner with your Senior PM and Product Marketing on go‑to‑market activities for your launches.


• Involve the right stakeholders; elevate tradeoffs with crisp options.


• Contribute near‑term input to vision and strategic initiatives in the domain.

Domain, craft & how we work

• Build deep fluency in Action Processing (AP) and Contracting domain mechanics and adjacent dependencies.


• Define and track success metrics for your work; make progress visible to your Senior PM and product leadership.


• Build stable, trusted working relationships internally; participate actively in team forums.


• Demonstrate impact.com’s Operating Principles consistently (customer focus, ownership, trust, getting the right stuff done, innovate & simplify, get better every day).

What You’ll Bring:

• Early‑career product experience (internships, APM/PM rotation, technical PM adjacent roles, founder/builder experience, or equivalent impact) — or strong evidence you can operate at this level from a technical background.


• Degree in engineering or computer science (or a closely related technical field), with a strong academic record.


• Technical orientation: you are curious about how systems work, not only how tickets move. Comfortable running basic analyses from source data and using the insights to inform decisions — not only consuming reports others produce.


• Already using AI tools in real work — drafting, research synthesis, analysis, light prototyping, or workflow automation. We want someone who has started this shift, not someone who treats AI as a novelty.


• Fast time to value on requirements: you can get to a solid first draft quickly, iterate with feedback, and avoid over‑shaping before eng can react.


• Bias to execution: you get the right stuff done. You prioritize ruthlessly, close loops, and ship outcomes over activity.


• Experience writing structured requirements in Markdown (or similar) — user stories, acceptance criteria, lightweight specs — including comfort working near a codebase/GitHub context (coursework, internships, side projects, or prior roles count).


• Clear written and verbal communication; ability to turn ambiguous asks into structured requirements and acceptance criteria.


• Comfort working with engineers and designers in an agile delivery environment.


• Comfort with complex / lightly documented systems and learning by immersion.


• Strong organization and follow‑through: you track owners, dates, and open questions without dropping balls.


• Curiosity, coachability, and a bias to learn by doing; you ask good questions and incorporate feedback quickly.


• Customer empathy: interest in how brands and partners experience contracting, action processing, terms, and monetization workflows.

Nice To Have:

• Personal projects, prototypes, or scripts you’ve built with AI agents / coding assistants that show you ship, not just discuss.


• Exposure to marketplace, fintech, SaaS monetization, contracting, or partner/platform products.


• Experience triaging customer/support requests or working with Customer Success / field teams.

Salary Range:

$85,000 – $95,000 per year, plus an additional 5% variable annual bonus contingent on Company performance and eligible to receive Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) grant. *This is the pay range the Company believes is equitable for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant along with the requirements of the position, and the Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time.

Benefits and Perks:

At impact.com, we believe that when you’re happy and fulfilled, you do your best work. That’s why we’ve built a benefits package that supports your well‑being, growth, and work‑life balance.

• Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance


• Office‑only catered lunch every Thursday, a healthy snack bar, and great coffee to keep you fueled


• Flexible spending accounts and 401(k)


• Flexible Working: Our Responsible PTO policy means you can take the time off you need to rest and recharge. We're committed to a positive work‑life balance and provide a flexible environment that allows you to be happy and fulfilled in both your career and your personal life.


• Health and Wellness: Your well‑being is a priority. Our mental health and wellness benefit includes up to 12 fully covered therapy/coaching sessions per year, with additional dependent coverage. We also offer a monthly gym reimbursement policy to support your physical health.


• A Stake in Our Growth: We offer Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) as part of our total compensation, giving you a stake in the company’s growth with a 3‑year vesting schedule, pending Board approval.


• Investing in Your Growth: We’re committed to your continuous learning. Take advantage of our free Coursera subscription and our PXA courses.


• Parental Support: We offer a generous parental leave policy, 26 weeks of fully paid leave for the primary caregiver and 13 weeks fully paid leave for the secondary caregiver.


• Technology Financial Support: We provide a technology stipend to help you set up your home office and a monthly allowance to cover your internet expenses.

impact.com is proud to be an equal‑opportunity workplace. All employees and applicants for employment shall be given fair treatment and equal employment opportunity regardless of their race, ethnicity or ancestry, color or caste, religion or belief, age, sex (including gender identity, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy/maternity), national origin, weight, neurodivergence, disability, marital and civil partnership status, caregiving status, veteran status, genetic information, political affiliation, or other prohibited non‑merit factors.

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